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Testing cybersecurity techniques for critical infrastructure on real-world setups is economically infeasible and lacks flexibility. A study presents a testbed for water infrastructures capable of accurately assessing the effectiveness of cybersecurity solutions to address this challenge. The study has exploited the testbed to investigate monitoring systems’ reactions in the presence of physical and cyber issues. A comparison between a model-based fault diagnosis (FD) system with a network anomaly detector (NAD) has been provided. The experimental stage has stressed the consideration that wanted to be emphasized where the control theory world has to merge with the network security one in order to provide overall cyber–physical security for critical infrastructure (CI) scenarios.

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Distance-based network localization is a very effective way to obtain the position of nodes in a network via range measuring; this, however, requires nodes with nontrivial sensing capabilities. Range-free techniques, conversely, use much simpler nodes but often provide just a rough estimate on the node's position. In this paper we develop a hybrid localization algorithm that combines range-free and distance-based sensors. A detailed simulation campaign aimed at corroborating the findings and at showing the potentialities of the approach concludes the paper.

The 2022 Italian Mesenchymal Stem Cell Group (Gruppo Italiano Staminali Mesenchimali, GISM) Annual Meeting took place on 20–21 October 2022 in Turin (Italy), with the support of the University of Turin and the City of Health and Science of Turin. The novelty of this year’s meeting was its articulation, reflecting the new structure of GISM based on six sections: (1) Bringing advanced therapies to the clinic: trends and strategies, (2) GISM Next Generation, (3) New technologies for 3D culture systems, (4) Therapeutic applications of MSC-EVs in veterinary and human medicine, (5) Advancing MSC therapies in veterinary medicine: present challenges and future perspectives, (6) MSCs: a double-edged sword: friend or foe in oncology. National and international speakers presented their scientific works with the aim of promoting an interactive discussion and training for all attendees. The atmosphere was interactive, where ideas and questions between younger researchers and senior mentors were shared in all moments of the congress.

Driver Monitoring Systems are gaining increasing interest from car-makers, being featured by technologies capable to improve road safety levels and prevent accidents. Currently, these systems are mostly passive, based on distance traveled and travel time. The market trend is moving towards active systems, featured by popular approaches, such as behavioral and physiological. This article proposes a Driver Monitoring System to detect driver's drowsiness with a hybrid technique that uses both approaches. The first performs a driver's face analysis by monitoring ocular variables; the second is based on biometric signals, such as Heart Variability and Galvanic Skin Response. A distributed hardware/software architecture has been designed in order to develop real-time data acquisition and a fuzzy-based inference. Comparison tests between the hybrid approach and the two single ones showed the benefits of the proposed method in estimating driver's drowsiness, considering a subjective estimation conducted during driving sessions with the CARLA simulator.

Industrial Control Devices are one of the major targets for hackers due to their exposure to threats. The principle of "air gaps" (disconnecting the Industrial Control Network from the operational networks) is not anymore feasible in a connected world. In this paper, a host anomaly detection system for Critical Infrastructures networks is presented. The device, called Smart Extension, also implements a filtering strategy in order to secure a single host reacting to cyber threats. Therefore, it is positioned in the network between PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) and the SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) control centre, more precisely just in front of the PLC. Finally, experimental results are shown in order to explain the internal working procedures in a possible case study.

In this chapter, we present a system for indoor and outdoor localization and navigation to allow the low visionusers in experiencing cultural heritagein autonomy. The system is based on the joint utilizationof dead-reckoning and computer visiontechniques on a smartphone-centric tracking system. The system is explicitly designed for visually impaired people, but it can be easily generalized to other users, and it is built under the assumption that special reference signals, such as colored tapes, painted lines, or tactile paving, are deployed in the environment for guiding visually impaired users along pre-defined paths. Differently from previous works on localization, which are focused only on the utilization of inertial sensors integrated into the smartphones, we exploit the smartphone cameraas an additional sensor that, on one side, can help the visually impaired user to identify the paths and, on the other side, can provide direction estimates to the tracking system. The users with the help of the navigation systemmay experience the museum or the cultural sitein autonomy, by following a path previously decided and by going from a location of interest to another, without any external personal assistant. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, by means of experimental tests performed in a controlled indoor environmentand in a real outdoor installation.

Over the last year, the Internet of Things (IoT) drove the development of cyber-physical systems, leading the convergence between information and operational technologies. This coupling improves performances and saves costs but increases the number of vulnerabilities and the attack surface to malicious actors. Consequently, it is mandatory to understand how IoT devices can be properly integrated into a more secure environment. This issue is even more crucial in the field of Critical Infrastructures, such as energy, water, transportation, and telecommunications. To this aim, this paper analyzes the concept of opacity for Discrete Event Systems (DES) and applies it to a real system. The opacity describes the ability of the system to keep some states secret even if an attacker knows the happening of some events. The proposed approach is validated by applying the concept of opacity on the analysis over a simple system. It is demonstrated that opacity can be guaranteed and exploited when systems having different levels of security are integrated.

Industrial Control systems traditionally achieved security by using proprietary protocols to communicate in an isolated environment from the outside. This paradigm is changed with the advent of the Industrial Internet of Things that foresees flexible and interconnected systems. In this contribution, a device acting as a connection between the operational technology network and information technology network is proposed. The device is an intrusion detection system related to legacy systems that is able to collect and reporting data to and from industrial IoT devices. It is based on the common signature based intrusion detection system developed in the information technology domain, however, to cope with the constraints of the operation technology domain, it exploits anomaly based features. Specifically, it is able to analyze the traffic on the network at application layer by mean of deep packet inspection, parsing the information carried by the proprietary protocols. At a later stage, it collect and aggregate data from and to IoT domain. A simple set up is considered to prove the effectiveness of the approach.

The interaction among networking, sensing, and control in the modern industry results in a variety of new devices used in many sectors such as health, energy distribution, and transportation. The on-going tendency of exploiting automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies leads to the Industry 4.0. The fourth industrial revolution deals with Cyber-Physical Systems, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and cognitive computing converging towards the Industrial Internet of Things. To be successful, this new era requires innovative paradigms to ensure the security of provided services and connected systems. In the industrial field, the problem gets more complex due to the need of protecting a large attack surface while guaranteeing the availability of the systems and the real-time response to the presence of threats. In this chapter, we perform an analysis of the existing industrial threats and we present a distributed intrusion detection methodology to deal with attacks affecting the Industrial Internet of Things scenarios.

In this paper, we present an innovative cyber physical system for indoor and outdoor localization and navigation, based on the joint utilization of dead-reckoning and computer vision techniques on a smartphone-centric tracking system. The system is explicitly designed for visually impaired people, but it can be easily generalized to other users, and it is built under the assumption that special reference signals, such as colored tapes, painted lines, or tactile paving, are deployed in the environment for guiding visually impaired users along pre-defined paths. Differently from previous works on localization, which are focused only on the utilization of inertial sensors integrated into the smartphones, we exploit the smartphone camera as an additional sensor that, on one side, can help the visually impaired user to identify the paths and, on the other side, can provide direction estimates to the tracking system. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, by means of experimental tests performed in a real outdoor installation and in a controlled indoor environment.

The reliability of the localization of Wireless Sensor Networks in presence of errors or malicious data alteration is a challenging research topic: recently, several studies have been carried out to identify, remove or neglect the faulted/malicious nodes. This paper addresses the capability of a network, composed of range-capable nodes and anchor nodes (i.e., nodes that know their position), to detect a faulty or malicious alteration of the information provided by the anchor nodes. Specifically, we consider biases for the position of anchor nodes that alter the localization of the network, and we provide conditions under which the nodes are able to detect the event, with particular reference to two distance-based localization algorithms, namely trilateration and Shadow Edge Localization Algorithm.

We present an innovative smartphone-centric tracking system for indoor and outdoor environments, based on the joint utilization of dead-reckoning and computer vision (CV) techniques. The system is explicitly designed for visually impaired people (although it could be easily generalized to other users) and it is built under the assumption that special reference signals, such as painted lines, colored tapes or tactile pavings are deployed in the environment for guiding visually impaired users along pre-defined paths. Thanks to highly optimized software, we are able to execute the CV and sensor-fusion algorithms in run-time on low power hardware such as a normal smartphone, precisely tracking the users movements.

Critical infrastructure (CI) protection and situation awareness are relevant topics in critical system domain. These issues go far beyond the academic world involving very often the national security framework. In this contribution, a review of the most attractive approaches proposed for addressing the situation awareness problems is presented. Most of the proposed approaches are based on multi-sensor data fusion, since the awareness is achieved by building a scenario using data provided by sensors spread into the systems. Humans are supposed to interact with the system, but only a few models are able to include their intervention. The review analysis is performed by considering models, architectures, and techniques adopted in each system and by highlighting their effectiveness and drawbacks. Finally an example in the field of air traffic management is presented. © 2014 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.