Education and Training Series #112: Defensive Cyber Security Architecture and Impact on GenIV Reactors
This webinar is part of a series hosted by the GIF Education and Training Working Group since 2016.
The link to register to this webinar can be found on this page under "about this webinar".
Who should attend?
Policymakers, industry professionals, regulators, researchers, students, the general public.
About the "GIF Education and Training" Webinars
These webinars, organised by the GIF Education and Training Working Group are streamed live monthly. The recordings and slide decks are accessible after the webinar on this website. These webinars cover a very broad range of technical and policy related topics. At the end of 2023 they have been viewed by more than 15000 people (approximately half of the views during the live streams and the other half views being of the archives on the public GIF website). In total, the GIF webinars have reached Generation IV enthusiasts, scientists, and engineers in more than 80 countries.
These webinars are organised and hosted by the GIF Education and Training Working Group (ETWG).
About this Webinar
Generation IV small modular reactors (SMRs) and micro reactors rely heavily on digital instrumentation and control (I&C), automation, and remote operational concepts, increasing the coupling between nuclear safety and cyber security. As a result, cyber resiliency must be addressed throughout the full lifecycle of reactor facilities, from early design concepts through operation, maintenance, and decommissioning. A secure by design approach treats cyber security as a core engineering consideration, ensuring that safety assumptions are preserved as systems become more digitally integrated and operationally autonomous.
This seminar explores how foundational nuclear safety design principles, such as defence in depth, separation, redundancy, and diversity, can be leveraged to inform the development of a defensive cyber security architecture (DCSA). A DCSA organizes digital assets into security zones and defines protected interfaces between them to constrain attack pathways and establish layered protection. The discussion highlights how early, high level safety and I&C design decisions enable or limit effective cyber security implementation in later phases, and examines the implications for reactor operations, including remote operations and remote maintenance in advanced reactor designs.
Dr. Patricia Paviet from PNNL, USA, member of GIF ETWG will facilitate this webinar.
Meet the presenter and moderator
Mr
Rick BODNER
Mr. Rick Bodner is a Cyber Security Research Specialist in the Cyber Resiliency Branch at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), whose work has focused on supporting systems important to safety and other complex systems across the nuclear, aerospace, and defense sectors. His research and professional focus lie at the intersection of cyber security, human factors, and complex information systems, informed by academic training and applied research. His work spans software and systems development, the application of quality standards in the design of systems, and the application of standards and regulatory guides covering such aspects as cyber security for industrial control systems, digital hazards, human factors, supervisory control, and computer-based procedures. Rick was a key contributor to the design of a control-centre plant display system for a Generation III reactor. At CNL, he examines how cyber security considerations influence digital system design, functionality, and regulatory compliance, with the goal of strengthening the cyber resilience of operational technology (OT) in nuclear and other critical infrastructure environments. Rick earned his PhD in Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 2004.
Dr
Patricia PAVIET
Dr. Patricia Paviet was the first chair of the GIF Education and Training Working Group (2015-2024). She now focuses on leading the efforts of the successful GIF Education and Training webinars series and has been doing so since the inception of this initiative in September 2016.
She serves on the GIF MSR pSSC representing the United States since 2021. She joined GIF in November 2015, as chair of the Education and Training Task Force. Outside GIF, Dr. Paviet is the National Technical Director of the Molten Salt Reactor Program for the US Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy. She is managing the research supporting molten salt reactor development across six U.S. national laboratories. She is also a Senior Technical Advisor at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, providing guidance on used nuclear fuel recycling. She has an extensive technical background on the nuclear fuel cycle (front and back end).