Smart Building Control System Emulation Platform for Security Testing

Smart buildings in general, and smart building control systems in particular, are becoming increasingly complex, and their security characteristics need to be assessed through continuous testing. However, problems such as high cost, significant risks, limited resources, and lack of flexibility make it difficult to use real buildings for such assessments. Moreover, current simulation-based approaches have limitations in terms of the scope of the experiment scenarios and the relevance of the results. To address these issues, we have implemented a smart building control system emulation platform, named SBCSE, that was designed and developed based on the architecture and experiment log data of a real smart building. SBCSE makes it possible to conduct security testing in connection with smart building control systems, and the related communication protocols, so that the consequences of various cyberattacks and the effectiveness of possible countermeasures can be objectively assessed. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of SBCSE, as well as two case studies that illustrate the applicability of the platform. Our experiments demonstrate how the effects of cyberattacks can be quantified via emulation experiments, and how potential countermeasure implementations can be validated before deployment in the real world.