The Benefits That Digital Twins Bring To Cybersecurity

 

In all of the writing that I have done in the past 13 years, there seems to be one central thread:  The Cloud.  Back then, it was all about data storage.  But fast forward to now, and either with the AWS or Microsoft Azure, the world is your oyster. 

It is totally unfathomable with what you can do with the Cloud today, in a way, it is like the technology in Star Trek.  But don’t discount it, food replicators are still a real possibility down the road.

Today, many businesses have made the full transition to the Cloud, but there are still some out there who choose to remain totally On Prem or have a hybrid approach of sorts.  Perhaps there is the fear of having a total loss of control, or the processes that are still there simply cannot moved to the AWS or Azure. 

A typical example of this are the manufacturing/supply chain/logistics industries,

Their processes are so legacy based that it is totally infeasible to move them to the Cloud.  It’s like our Critical Infrastructure.  You simply cannot put electrical wiring into a private Cloud.  So what are these industries to do?  There is still a ton of advantages that they can get out of it.  Well, the answer lies in creating what is known as the “Digital Twins”. 

This is where an organization takes an existing process that they have On Prem, and create an exact (or as close as possible) replica in the Cloud.  So for example, imagine the processes that are used at Boeing to build a 787. 

Take a subcomponent of that, such as mounting the jet engines to the wing.  Through careful design, this process can actually be replicated in the Cloud.  Not too many people have heard of this yet, but it is a growing market, which is right now valued at about $5 billion.  It is expected to grow at 35% per by the time we hit 2027.

Now keep in mind that this kind of technology has existed for quite some time.  For example, the Boeing 777 was the first airplane to be designed totally by computers.  But the tools now have become advanced enough where different “what if scenarios” can be played in the Cloud on existing processes. 

Imagine the water supply of a small town, and the engineers are trying to figure how to redo some of the piping in order to optimize the flow of water.

Well, there is no need to create a model of it in the physical world, this can all be done in the virtual world.  Many different scenarios can be played out in a short period time, and ultimately the best possible configuration causing the least amount of downtime can then be chosen, then implemented back into the real world.  This is now capturing the interest of the Cybersecurity world.

At the present time, an IT Security team can quickly model (using AI and ML) what future threat variants can look like, but they are still left to guess, using their own judgements, as to what the impact could be.  But soon, this guessing will not be required. 

Now, a company can replicate their entire IT and Network infrastructure into their own private Cloud, and get a real simulation of what these new threat vectors could bring to the table.  Think of this environment like a “Super Sandbox”.

From here, the IT Security team will be in a much better position to implement the right security controls with a much greater level of confidence.  Although this sounds great in theory, there are two areas of major concern that need to be dealt with first, which are as follows:

1)     Data leakage:

Whenever you create a Digital Twin in the Cloud, you are essentially creating a bidirectional flow of data.  Meaning, whatever new datasets are harnessed into the On Prem will be automatically sent to the Digital Twin based in the Cloud, and vice versa.  So, there are two things that you need to be aware of: 

*Any tests that you do on the Digital Twin could be transmitted down into the production environment, and cause damage that you were not expecting to happen.  Therefore, you have to make doubly sure that any ripple effects like this are totally eliminated.

*Second, by introducing a new flow of datasets also increases the attack surface that can be easily taken advantage of by the Cyberattacker.  You must also take the time to make sure this bidirectional flow is protected, and is not prone to data leakage.

*Third, now that you have datasets in two different environments, which means you need to have twice the amount of controls in order to mitigate the chances of any sort of data leakage from happening.  This can cause an increase in the amount of overhead that is required to keep both environments safe from one another: “Protecting the digital twin itself is as important as protecting the system it analyzes”

(SOURCE:  https://www.darkreading.com/dr-tech/unlocking-the-cybersecurity-benefits-of-digital-twins).

2) Many mistakes could still be made:

               Although the actual production environment may be working fine, trying to build an exact     replica of that in the Cloud still may not be feasible yet.  Let’s go back to my earlier example of         the optimization of water flow.  While this is theoretically possible to do, building out such a          large-scale replication will not only take time to accomplish, but mistakes could also be made as well, if the original blueprints are not made available.  For that reason, many advocates for the       Digital Twins concept (such as the Digital Twins Consortium, the link to that is:   https://www.digitaltwinconsortium.org/) highly recommend that an IT Security team start small,         then build up there, as the processes become more known as established.

My Thoughts On This:

There are two things to keep in mind here about the concept of Digital Twins:

*We are only still in the beginning stages of it – as many experts predict, we are still at least 15- 20 years away until it becomes mainstream into our society.

*The Digital Worlds is not meant to be viewed as a just a one point in time picture – rather, it is dynamic in nature, and it should also grow in time in time to its fullest degree in order to realize the full benefit of it.

Surprisingly, I like the idea of the Digital Twins, especially what it means for Cybersecurity.  But my question is now: Ultimately is the world going to be totally digital, where everything is represented as objects in the virtual world?  The  Metaverse is pointing towards that direction.

In other words, are we going to lose our own, physical identities and be branded by some sort of Avatar?  The answer is yes, and to me, that is very scary.

Finally, to download a full report on the Digital Twins from Capgemini, click here:

https://www.capgemini.com/insights/research-library/digital-twins/?utm_source=pr&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=intelligentindustry_none_link_pressrelease_none&utm_campaign=intelligent-industry_digital-twins