Developer: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Co-developers: Sandia National Laboratories, Idaho National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

The vulnerability of industrial control systems (ICS) to cyberattacks has become alarmingly clear in the past several years, with a series of headline-grabbing hacks. In response, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), in partnership with Sandia National Laboratories, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Idaho National Laboratory, developed More Situational Awareness for Industrial Control Systems (MOSAICS), the first-ever comprehensive, integrated, and automated solution for ICS cybersecurity. MOSAICS provides a robust, semi-automated capability to extend a human operator’s ability to detect, analyze, defend against, and share situational awareness of threats against facility-related control systems. It achieves this through the integration of commercial and unique APL and partner-developed capabilities, application of automation, and use of human-machine teaming. MOSAICS detects anomalous activity across all layers of the ICS architecture by leveraging advanced sensing, analytics, and intrusion protection capabilities operating throughout the ICS network. These capabilities are further augmented by security orchestration. It then provides a recommended course of action to the human operator to disrupt and mitigate the cyberattack while maintaining operational functions of the control system.