1. Project Goals : issues to be solved.

The general issue to be solved in this multi-year-project (MYP): “How to provide efficient cyber defence for intelligent systems” – with respective use-cases in modern automated and intelligent Supply Chains (SC) , Military Supply Chains (MSC) and Logistics Systems (LS).

The general goal of this MYP: “To develop and to pilot a Proof of Concept (PoC) of an operational Intelligent System for Cyber Defence (ISCD)” – i.e., to foster resilience of intelligent logistics and supply chains under cyber threats.

The general approach of this MYP: “Combination of Deep Learning, Neural networks, stochastic Petri Nets and Genetic Algorithms, for AI-based simulation, optimization and decision making in logistics”.

This MYP addresses the following SPS Key Priorities:
– Cyber Defence
ii. Support in developing cyber defence capabilities, including new technologies and support to the construction of information technology infrastructure;
iii. Cyber defence situation awareness

The relevance of this MYP to security issues and to the SPS Key Priorities includes the following:
• understanding about qualitatively new, emerging threat vector;
• understanding of resilience of smart systems in critical tasks;
• Proof of Concept (PoC) for protecting machine learning of deliberate brain washing.

2. Impact and Implementation of this MYP.

The MYP has three basic impacts on Logistics, SC and MSC:
a) to increase the sustainability of the SC and MSC – satisfaction of the customer’s request;
b) to increase the efficiency of supply chain operations;
c) to provide high level of reliability in the logistics and supply chain operations despite cyber attacks.

The indicators for realization of these impacts are:
• reduction of system’s response time in case of unforeseen circumstances;
• growth of predictability of logistic processes;
• increase of the probability of uninterrupted operations in supply chains;
• reduction of the time of logistic operations’ performance;
• increase of the system’s capacity (throughput);
• reduction of costs for logistics for a certain level of service.

3. Current status of the technology and the novelty of this MYP.

Current status: military logistics and military SC have requirements for a very high reliability of supply, as compared to price and technology factors in standard business practices;

Requirements for future SC and MSC: must be autonomous (to some extent) and capable to generate its own decisions even in unknown situations – i.e., to be “agile” rather than just “flexible”.

Novelty of this MYP: includes development and realization of a Proof of Concept (PoC) for an Intelligent System for Cyber Defence – ISCD, capable to:
• Realize intelligent and resilient cyber defence in LS, SC and MSC via development and implementation of highly sophisticated “Immune System”;
• Possess cognitive and associative capabilities and smart decision making via specific vaccination mode” used as intelligent tool for generation of models of potential cyber-attacks ;
• Provide high fault-tolerance and/or reconfiguration via recognizing cyber-attack (and even the symptoms for incoming cyber-attack), and structurally adapt to it.

The core of the proposed Immune System shall be realized via implementation of innovative hybrid models – e.g.,
– Deep Adversarial Neural Networks combined with Stochastic Petri Nets;
– Evolutionary (Genetic type) algorithms;
– Neuro-Fuzzy Networks and other types of intelligent modules possessing learning, self-learning, adaptive and associative capabilities.
Agile and resilient SC can align their strategy and operations to adapt to risk(s) that affects their capacities. The issue here is not about responding to a one-time crisis, or just having a flexible supply chain. It is about continuously anticipating and adjusting to discontinuities (e.g., cyber-attacks in particular), to core business.
A general view of several Pilot Installations – available at the experimental facility of Technical University – Sofia, BG, are presented at the following two figures.
These pilot installations represent complex Logistics Systems (LS), where the developed intelligent systems for cyber defence shall be implemented and tested.

4. General deliverables of this MYP:

1) The MYP provides a multi-dimensional analysis for a new type of data poisoning security threats to intelligent logistic systems. The analysis covers the aspects of general vulnerability of intelligent components to data attacks, the scale of consequences of such attacks in logistic systems and the analysis of possibilities to build structural resilience against data attacks into logistic systems.

2) The project models feasible data attack scenarios and proposes an architecture to increase system immunity against adversary data flows.

3) The project provides a Proof of Concept (PoC) implementation of an information immune system and tests it with both simulated data and generated attacks on real experimental logistic environment.

5. End-users: who are they and how will they contribute to the project and its implementation.

A) End-users on more general level: all parties that deal with partly autonomous/self-adaptive systems and whose data sources can potentially be manipulated.

B) End-users for this specific PoC: all interested in resilience of intelligent/adaptive logistics and/or supply chain networks.
B.1. Military end-users from Finland;
B.2. Military end-users from Ukraine ;
B.3. End-users from France representing the civil sector.

Contribution of the End-Users: consumers, consultants, liaisons and testers of the “beta-version” of the developed system in the project, capable to provide real data from “the field’.
In case of a project success, the next step will be the development of a fully operational tool and its introduction into civil and military supply chain management and logistics systems.
The results of the final product of this MYP will be welcomed by the prospective end-users, since an implementation of an operational tool for intelligent and resilient cyber defence in SC and logistics will solve many considerable issues, i.e.:
• In the civil SC and Logistics the price and the technology factors will be enhanced and respectively a much better and competitive SPM will be provided;
• In the military SC and military LS the reliability of supply will have a considerable enhancement (one of the most important subject in the military operations). A generic system for intelligent resilient cyber defence (based on the already developed PoC) – could provide “an eternal” high-level reliability during military planning, military supply and military operation activities.