ABSTRACT
A cyber physical system is composed of different components that act independently in order to carry out a set of tasks and functions. This set of components includes the computational systems, communication systems, and control systems. The cyber physical system holds the key to several important applications, such as the transportation system, healthcare system, power grids, etc.; therefore, securing these systems should be given very high priority as any compromise with these systems may lead to a major risk to life as well as property. Also cyber physical systems are distributed across the globe at certain geographical locations, which tend to collect a large amount of data and also perform analysis and decision making on that data. This feature of collecting a large amount of data is helpful in making quality and smart decisions using certain machine learning algorithms; however, there are certain potential threats that can take place at any moment in the system during the data storing phase, data collection phase, or data transmission phase. These threats make cyber physical systems vulnerable. Also, there are many solutions provided in order to secure cyber physical systems, like approaches in context to machine learning, physical unclonable function, firmware diversity, etc. In this chapter, we will look at several vulnerabilities of cyber physical systems in context to their security, their consequences, and how they affect the different sectors of the economy. We will also look at the various countermeasures that can be taken into consideration for the security of cyber physical systems and their components in order to avoid any catastrophic damages that can occur if security of such systems is compromised.
