In today’s Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) environment, where different systems interact with the physical world, the state proposed by the Industry 4.0 standards can lead to escalating vulnerabilities, especially when these systems receive data streams from multiple intermediaries, requiring multilevel security approaches, in addition to link encryption. At the same time taking into account the heterogeneity of the systems included in the IIoT ecosystem and the non-institutionalized interoperability in terms of hardware and software, serious issues arise as to how to secure these systems. In this framework, given that the protection of industrial equipment is a requirement inextricably linked to technological developments and the use of the IoT, it is important to identify the major vulnerabilities and the associated risks and threats and to suggest the most appropriate countermeasures. In this context, this study provides a description of the attacks against IIoT systems, as well as a thorough analysis of the solutions for these attacks, as they have been proposed in the most recent literature.

Attackers are perpetually modifying their tactics to avoid detection and frequently leverage legitimate credentials with trusted tools already deployed in a network environment, making it difficult for organizations to proactively identify critical security risks. Network traffic analysis products have emerged in response to attackers’ relentless innovation, offering organizations a realistic path forward for combatting creative attackers. Additionally, thanks to the widespread adoption of cloud computing, Device Operators (DevOps) processes, and the Internet of Things (IoT), maintaining effective network visibility has become a highly complex and overwhelming process. What makes network traffic analysis technology particularly meaningful is its ability to combine its core capabilities to deliver malicious intent detection. In this paper, we propose a novel darknet traffic analysis and network management framework to real-time automating the malicious intent detection process, using a weight agnostic neural networks architecture. It is an effective and accurate computational intelligent forensics tool for network traffic analysis, the demystification of malware traffic, and encrypted traffic identification in real time. Based on a weight agnostic neural networks (WANNs) methodology, we propose an automated searching neural net architecture strategy that can perform various tasks such as identifying zero-day attacks. By automating the malicious intent detection process from the darknet, the advanced proposed solution is reducing the skills and effort barrier that prevents many organizations from effectively protecting their most critical assets.

Upgrading the existing energy infrastructure to a smart grid necessarily goes through the provision of integrated technological solutions that ensure the interoperability of business processes and reduce the risk of devaluation of systems already in use. Considering the heterogeneity of the current infrastructures, and in order to keep pace with the dynamics of their operating environment, we should aim to the reduction of their architectural complexity and the addition of new and more efficient technologies and procedures. Furthermore, the integrated management of the overall ecosystem requires a collaborative integration strategy which should ensure the end-to-end interconnection under specific quality standards together with the establishment of strict security policies. In this respect, every design detail can be critical to the success or failure of a costly and ambitious project, such as that of smart energy networks. This work presents and classifies the communication network standards that have been established for smart grids and should be taken into account in the process of planning and implementing new infrastructures.

An important application for the IEEE 802.16 technology (also called WiMAX) is to provide high-speed access to the Internet where the transmission control protocol (TCP) is the core transport protocol. In this paper we study through extensive simulation scenarios the performance characteristics of five representative TCP schemes, namely, TCP New Reno, Vegas, Veno, Westwood, and BIC, in WiMAX (and WLANs) networks, under the conditions of correlated wireless errors, asymmetric end-to-end capabilities, and link congestion. The target is to evaluate how the above conditions would affect the TCP congestion control and suggest the best schemes to be employed in WiMAX networks.