Context-Aware Attribute Based Access Control for Cloud-based SCADA Systems

Cloud-based SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems enable seamless access to internet of things (IoT) operational data for employees at control facilities and operators working on the field for automated control and monitoring of industrial infrastructure. In this work, we introduced a novel approach based on ciphertext policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) to ensure secure and fine-grained access control over data stored in the cloud. Our proposed scheme considers static and dynamic attributes of the users to devise an access policy. Contextual locks are introduced for defining constraints on dynamic attributes. These locks are independent of the user's attribute sets; thus, they don't require decryption keys to be associated with dynamic attributes. This avoids system overhead with frequent changes in contextual parameters. To protect the confidentiality of the access policy, we obfuscate its attributes during the data-sharing process. Moreover, our proposed scheme prevents key escrow attacks on cloud-stored data. Additionally, fog servers are employed to verify the user's contextual attributes and reduce the computational overhead of decryption for end users. Our scheme enhances the security and integrity of remote process control and monitoring in industrial systems while leveraging the benefits of real-time data analysis and decision-making.