Information Security Architecture Design for Cyber-Physical Integration System of Air Traffic Management

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. What is the main question addressed by the research?

In view of the serious network threats faced by networked air traffic management (ATM), this paper studies the basic theories and key technologies of ATM information security assurance and designs a credible security architecture to provide comprehensive and systematic security assurance for networked ATM. Starting from the problems and development trend of ATM security assurance, this paper investigates the dynamic and complex data processing process of ATM system.

 

2. Do you consider the topic original or relevant in the field? Does it address a specific gap in the field?

Yes. The problem solved in this paper is relevant to this journal.

 

3. What does it add to the subject area compared with other published material?

The main contributions of this paper include:

- Use blockchain technology to establish a trustworthy model of ATM from the key technical dimensions of security protection, security assessment and situational awareness.

- Propose an information security assurance architecture of networked ATM based on the trustworthy model.

- Propose a systematic research plan for the information security problems of networked ATM security.

 

4. What specific improvements should the authors consider regarding the methodology? What further controls should be considered?

- The data structure and data model of blockchain data should be clearly described.

- What are the overheads (e.g., system setup, data storage, computing efficiency, etc.) of the proposed scheme?

- The authors have claimed the data integrity with the static analysis of distributed storage layer. How to differentiate the authors’ work from these works which are already performed over distributed storage, such as BlockShare: A Blockchain empowered system for privacy-preserving verifiable data sharing, VQL: Efficient and verifiable cloud query services for blockchain systems, vChain+: Optimizing verifiable blockchain boolean range queries. More discussion should be added in the paper.

- There are more opportunities for conducting meaningful experiments to comprehensively evaluate the system performance and overheads.

 

5. Are the conclusions consistent with the evidence and arguments presented and do they address the main question posed?

Yes.

 

6. Are the references appropriate?

More technical papers about blockchain should be investigated and analyzed. For example:

- Leveraging public-private blockchain interoperability for closed consortium interfacing. IEEE Conference on Computer Communications.

- VFChain: Enabling verifiable and auditable federated learning via blockchain systems. IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering.

- SymmeProof: Compact Zero-Knowledge Argument for Blockchain Confidential Transactions, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing.

- B-DNS: A secure and efficient DNS based on the blockchain technology, IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering.

 

7. Please include any additional comments on the tables and figures.

 

- A table of abbreviations could be added.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

With the continuous expansion of air traffic flow, the increasingly serious aviation network security threats have a significant and far-reaching impact on the safe operation of the aviation industry. The networked air traffic management (ATM) system is an integrated space-air-ground network integrating communication, network, satellite and data chain technology, which adopts a network-centric structure to provide network-enabled services and applications for the air transportation system.

 In view of the serious network threats faced by networked ATM, the authors study the basic theories and key technologies of ATM information security assurance and designs a credible security architecture to provide comprehensive and systematic security assurance for networked ATM.

They, starting from the problems and development trend of ATM security assurance, investigate the dynamic and complex data processing process of ATM system, analyzes the complex interaction between its cyber and physical system, and then constructs the networked ATM cyber-physical fusion system model and threat model.

Furthermore, they map the causal relationship between ATM security threat alert information into a Bayesian network, and the game model of networked ATM is proposed using Bayesian Nash equilibrium strategy.

They show that, at last, the information security assurance architecture of networked ATM system based on blockchain technology is formed by establishing a distributed co-trust mechanism and multi-chain storage structure.

They conclude that hope this paper to bring some inspiration to the related research in academia and aviation, so as to provide useful reference for the construction of ATM safety and security system and the development of technology.

 

Interesting study.

These are my comments.

1.     All the figures must be described in details in the body of the ms, and not simply cited.

2.     Please separate the text dedicated to the introduction and the text dedicated to the other part of the manuscript.

3.     Use a standard presentation (introduction, methods,  results, discussion, results).

4.     Rows 764-784. Insert the algorithm in a box

5.     Discuss you study with comparisons to other ones and insert the limitations.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

see attachment

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

More recent papers about blockchain, which are published on top conferences and journals,  could be investigated and analyzed.