Digital Twin Aging for Infrastructure Cybersecurity Prediction
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
It is challenging to detect or predict infrastructure behavior in customer environments due to the inability of vendors to accurately replicate these environments, and customers often restrict access for security reasons, making it difficult to manage infrastructure effectively, particularly in terms of cybersecurity.
Innovation Solution
The use of digital twins to virtually represent infrastructure, which are artificially aged to simulate current and future states, allowing for the detection of cybersecurity issues and enabling remedial or preventative actions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If vendors attempt to replicate customer environments to detect infrastructure behavior, then measurement precision improves, but device complexity and loss of time increase due to environment replication challenges
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a digital twin (virtual copy) of the customer's infrastructure environment that can be manipulated and tested without affecting the actual system. This allows vendors to replicate customer environments for security testing while avoiding the complexity of direct environment copying and access restrictions.
2Reliability
If customers restrict access to infrastructure for security reasons, then reliability improves, but loss of information increases due to limited access for vendors
Solution Approach 1:
The digital twin serves as an intermediary between the customer's restricted infrastructure and the vendor's testing needs. Vendors can perform security tests and gather information through the digital twin without directly accessing the actual infrastructure, thus maintaining security restrictions while preventing information loss.
3Ease of operation
If digital twins are used to represent infrastructure, then ease of operation improves, but device complexity increases due to digital twin management
Solution Approach 1:
The digital twin creates a simplified virtual representation of the infrastructure that can be operated and tested independently. This copying approach enables easier operation and testing compared to managing the actual complex infrastructure directly, despite the added complexity of maintaining the twin architecture.
4Productivity
If artificial aging is applied to digital twins to simulate future states, then productivity improves through predictive analysis, but loss of time increases due to simulation processing
Solution Approach 1:
The artificial aging process applies simulated time and usage patterns to the digital twin to predict future infrastructure states and vulnerabilities before they occur in the actual system. This preliminary action allows proactive security measures to be implemented, improving productivity through early detection despite the time required for simulations.
Data Source
AI summary
Techniques for management of virtual representations (e.g., digital twins) of infrastructure are disclosed. For example, a method comprises obtaining at least one virtual representation of an infrastructure, wherein the virtual representation represents the infrastructure in a first state, and applying at least one dataset to the virtual representation to artificially advance the virtual representation to represent the infrastructure in a second state. The method further comprises obtaining results representing the infrastructure in the second state, responsive to applying the at least one dataset to the virtual representation, wherein at least a portion of the results are indicative of a cybersecurity issue on the infrastructure, and then initiating one or more of a remedial action and a preventative action with respect to the infrastructure to address the cybersecurity issue.