Reinforcing Cyber Digital Twins for Protecting Critical Information Infrastructure (CII): Opportunities and Challenges

Digital Twin is hallmark of industrial revolution through automation and digitization. Digital Twin is an emerging technology domain to virtually model a physical system in a holistic fashion for enhanced productivity, seamless integration and effective supply chain. Digital Twin is digital replica of a physical process, system, product and service. It offers virtual modeling environment for monitoring and predicting possible outcome through simulation and real-time input of data. It replicates physical system in virtual space to manage the system through out its life-cycle. Digital Twin has diversified applications across various industrial sectors. Digital Twin being emerging technology has its associated misconceptions, challenges and opportunities. cyberphysical system and Digital Twins are vulnerable to cyber threats of diversified nature and magnitude. Digital Twin delineates mechanism for ascertaining operational-effectiveness and cyberreadiness of the CII. Digital Twin effectively addresses cyber security requirements of CII through virtual modeling, attack simulation and anomaly detection. Prognostic nature of Digital Twins aids in detecting targeted cyber attacks beforehand. Besides, digital twins offers prolific solutions for secure design and implementation of CII. Digital Twin technology merits adoption for protecting CII by addressing its associated challenges.