Secure and Usable Multifactor Authentication in OT

Description

Multifactor Authentication has been a crucial part of securing authentication for years.

For one sector, which includes most of our critical infrastructure, however there exists little to no

scientific work regarding this topic. It has been behind the state of the art in this aspect and is called:

Operational Technology. In this work we study the causes, which led to this situation and develop a new

concept to implement Multifactor Authentication in a secure and usable way in this specific area. The

method also describes how to analyze the setting to choose a fitting combination of factors. We base this

selection on an analysis, evaluation and comparison of possible factors regarding their security and usability.

To create a holistic security approach we expand the theory with the most important complementing security

aspects as well as their interaction with the implementation. The theoretical concept is then applied to an

industrial production line sample environment, for which multiple approaches and factors have been inspected,

compared and implemented.