Colin Fidge

Work place: School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Queensland University of Technology, GPO Box 2434, Brisbane, QLD 4001 Queensland, Australia

E-mail: c.fidge@qut.edu.au

Website:

Research Interests: Computational Engineering, Computer systems and computational processes, Systems Architecture, Information Systems, Information Storage Systems

Biography

Prof. Colin Fidge is a full Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Queensland University of Technology, where he teaches research principles and software development. His research interests include safety-critical, mission-critical and security-critical systems engineering. He has undertaken research projects in these areas for the defence, telecommunications, power generation and electricity transmission industries.

Author Articles
Limitations of Passively Mapping Logical Network Topologies

By Ayodeji J. Akande Colin Fidge Ernest Foo

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijcnis.2017.02.01, Pub. Date: 8 Feb. 2017

Understanding logical network connectivity is essential in network topology mapping especially in a fast growing network where knowing what is happening on the network is critical for security purposes and where knowing how network resources are being used is highly important. Mapping logical communication topology is important for network auditing, network maintenance and governance, network optimization, and network security. However, the process of capturing network traffic to generate the logical network topology may have a great influence on the operation of the network. In hierarchically structured networks such as control systems, typical active network mapping techniques are not employable as they can affect time-sensitive cyber-physical processes, hence, passive network mapping is required. Though passive network mapping does not modify or disrupt existing traffic, current passive mapping techniques ignore many practical issues when used to generate logical communication topologies. In this paper, we present a methodology which compares topologies from an idealized mapping process with what is actually achievable using passive network mapping and identify some of the factors that can cause inaccuracies in logical maps derived from passively monitored network traffic. We illustrate these factors using a case study involving a hierarchical control network.

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