[Zurück]

S. Biffl, M. Eckhart, A. Lüder, E. Weippl (Hrg.):
"Security and Quality in Cyber-Physical Systems Engineering";
Springer International Publishing, Switzerland, 2019, ISBN: 978-3-030-25311-0; 519 S.

Sitting at the Berlin Tegel airport, waiting for a flight to Vienna, the preparation of the book at hand
provides us with some concerns. Only weeks ago, another Boeing 373 Max8 airplane had crashed.
Following the communication of major air traffic safety organizations, a candidate reason for the acci‐
dents was a misleading combination of software and hardware in the airplane, leading to unintended
airplane behavior that the crew had not been able to compensate. As a traveler you ask yourself: how
can such dangerously misleading combinations occur in a safety‐conscious environment?
Modern airplanes (as most large technical systems ranging from trains and airplane systems to power
plants and factories) are complex cyber‐physical systems. They become software‐intensive technical
systems from combining physical system hardware, such as jet engines, wings, and flaps, with control
software assisting the pilots. Such complex cyber‐physical systems are developed in large engineering
organizations by executing complex engineering processes. Within these processes, several engineer‐
ing artefacts developed in parallel describe together the architecture and behavior of the intended
technical system. In the engineering organization and processes, several engineering disciplines pro‐
vide their special skills to the overall success of the engineering project.
Even if each involved engineer follows a discipline´s best practices, still inconsistencies, incompatibili‐
ties, unclear communication, or even errors may occur, may reduce the engineering quality and, in the
worst case, may result in an operational disaster, such as the recent Boeing 373 Max8 incident. Usually,
an incident is not intended, but there are cases where malicious acts are performed by individuals,
who are interested in causing engineering projects or the developed technical systems to fail.
Do we have a chance to protect engineering organizations against cyber threats and to ensure engi‐
neering project quality? Answers to these questions will be given in the book at hand. Therefore, the
book contains three parts that logically build up on each other. The first part discusses the structure
and behavior of engineering organizations for complex cyber‐physical systems. This part provides in‐
sights into processes and engineering activities executed and highlights requirements and bordering
conditions for secure and high‐quality engineering. The second part addresses quality improvements
with a focus on engineering data generation, exchange, aggregation, and use within an engineering
organization and the need of proper data modelling and engineering result validation. Finally, the third
part considers security aspects concerning complex cyber‐physical systems engineering. Chapters of
the last part cover, for example, security assessments of engineering organizations and their engineer‐
ing data management (including data exchange), security concepts and technologies that may be lev‐
eraged to mitigate the manipulation of engineering data, and discussions of design and run‐time as‐
pects of secure complex cyber‐physical systems.
After reaching Vienna with a safe flight in an Airbus 319 and sitting in the next City‐Airport‐Train, an‐
other complex cyber‐physical system, we are sure that reading this book can reduce the concerns we
had in Berlin and can assist engineers and decision makers, researchers, and practitioners in setting up
and improving secure and high quality engineering processes in appropriate engineering organizations.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35312-7