Locating Unsecured Industrial Sensors via IP Geolocation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Unsecured industrial sensors and controllers pose a significant security risk to mission-critical facilities and enterprise supply chains, as they are vulnerable to attacks, making it difficult for enterprises to proactively protect their assets and identify potential vulnerabilities in their industrial sensors and controllers.
Innovation Solution
An automated system that uses IP-geolocation and linked data to identify potential customers and entities in a supply chain affected by unsecured industrial sensors, replacing manual processes with an interactive visualization interface to provide real-time actionable intelligence, and determining accurate geolocation information by linking multiple sources of information.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If manual processes are used to identify unsecured sensors, then security analysts can conduct extensive research, but the process is time-consuming and difficult to scale
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces manual mechanical research processes with an automated computer-based system that uses IP address databases, geolocation services, and network scanning to automatically identify and locate unsecured sensors, thereby reducing detection time while maintaining or improving assessment accuracy
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables unsecured sensors to be automatically detected and identified through their own network communications and IP address exposures, without requiring active probing or manual investigation, allowing the sensors themselves to reveal their security status through their network presence
2Reliability
If comprehensive security monitoring is implemented across the supply chain, then enterprise risk is reduced, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a universal monitoring system that can identify unsecured sensors across multiple industries, facilities, and supply chain entities using a single platform that leverages public IP address databases and geolocation services, eliminating the need for separate monitoring systems for each entity
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses public IP address databases and geolocation services as intermediaries to bridge the gap between network security monitoring and physical location identification, allowing the system to locate unsecured sensors without direct access to private network infrastructure or sensor databases
3Loss of information
If IP address geolocation is used to locate unsecured sensors, then sensor location can be determined, but accuracy may be insufficient for precise facility identification
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transitions from two-dimensional IP address geolocation data to three-dimensional facility identification by incorporating facility databases, geographic radius searches, and multiple location verification methods to precisely identify the physical facility housing unsecured sensors
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary geolocation using IP address data to identify a geographic radius, then uses this preliminary information to guide subsequent facility database searches and location refinement processes, systematically narrowing down to the precise facility
Data Source
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AI summary
A system, method and non-transitory computer readable medium for detecting unsecured sensors in a network. A computing system can find an IP address associated with an unsecured sensor based on a port through which the unsecured sensor communicates with the network. The computing system can ascertain a prefix route associated with the IP address for the unsecured sensor based on a portion of the IP address. The computing system can determine geographic coordinate data associated with the prefix route. The computing system can identify location data of a set of facilities within a specified geographic radius of the geographic coordinate data. The computing system can associate the unsecured sensor with a first one of the facilities in the set of facilities based on a distance between geographic coordinate data and the location data associated with the first one of the facilities being less than a specified distance threshold.