Insights On Industrial Firewall and Its Application in Networked Control Systems

Current networked control systems are facing more and more severe challenges of cyber threats, and various intrinsic network-related vulnerabilities may cause serious damage to industrial production. To strengthen their network defense capabilities, industrial firewalls have been successfully developed to provide the access control service based on the defense-in-defense concept. In this paper, we first give a classified analysis on the intrinsic vulnerabilities from a network-related perspective. After that, we present several representative security technologies applied in today's industrial firewalls, and analyze their basic working principles and effects in practical application. Additionally, we further discuss some applicable security mechanisms which may take full advantage of burgeoning information technologies to provide better security services. Finally, we summarize three application modes of industrial firewalls in networked control systems, and show one application example of our industrial firewall in the real-world control system to verify its relatively fine properties.