Hadjer Benkraouda, Ezedin Barka and Khaled Shuaib, United Arab Emirates University, UAE

With the exponential growth in the digitalization of critical infrastructures such as nuclear plants and transmission and distribution grids, these systems have become more prone to coordinated cyber-physical attacks. One of the ways used to harden the security of these infrastructures is by utilizing UAVs for monitoring, surveillance and data collection. UAVs use data communication links to send the data collected to ground control stations (GCSs). The literature [1] suggests that there is a lack of research in the area of the cybersecurity of data communication from drones to GCSs. Therefore, this paper addresses this research gap and analyzes the vulnerabilities and attacks on the collected sensor data, mainly on: data availability, data integrity and data confidentiality, and will propose solutions for securing the drone’s data communication systems.

Information security, UAV Security, Critical Infrastructure Security.