Marilyn C. Wolf is the co-editor of the current special issue of the Proceedings of the IEEE, which is focused on safe and secure cyber-physical systems. Wolf holds the Rhesa “Ray” S. Farmer Distinguished Chair of Embedded Computing Systems in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and is a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar.

Wolf co-edited this issue with Dimitrios Serpanos, a professor in the Department of ECE at the University of Patras. A Ph.D. graduate of Princeton University, Serpanos was advised by Dick Lipton, who is now the Frederick G. Storey Chair in Computing in Tech’s School of Computer Science.

Cyber-physical systems use computers to control physical systems: automobiles, aircraft, medical devices, and manufacturing systems are all examples. These systems are often safety-critical. Safety is traditionally handled as an engineering task that concentrates on avoiding unsafe physical actions. Computer security is traditionally handled by computer scientists who concentrate on information security and integrity. Now that so many critical systems have been entrusted to a combination of computers and physical systems, safety and security can no longer be treated as separate topics.

This special issue of the Proceedings of the IEEE includes a survey article by Wolf and Serpanos that introduces key concepts and trends in the safety and security of cyber-physical systems. It also features a number of articles by leading experts in both academia and industry, including two papers from the Georgia Tech School of ECE:

“HoneyBot: A Honeypot for Robotic Systems” – written by Celine Irvene, David Formby, Samuel Litchfield, and Interim Steve W. Chaddick School Chair and Motorola Foundation Professor Raheem Beyah – describes a novel honeypot for robotic systems. Honeypots are Internet computers that are set up as lures for attackers; building a honeypot for robots requires simulation of the physical effects of their attacks. Irvene and Litchfield are ECE graduate students and Formby is an ECE postdoctoral researcher.

“Improving the Safety and Security of Wide-Area Cyber-Physical Systems Through a Resource-Aware, Service-Oriented Development Methodology” – written by Umer Tariq, Jacques Florence, and Wolf – describes a service-oriented architecture for cyber-physical systems that preserves the quality-of-service requirements of real-time control. The paper also illustrates their work on smart grid examples. Tariq is a Ph.D. graduate of Wolf’s research group and is the principal software architect at Prosumer Grid, Inc., and Florence is an ECE graduate student.