Cited by 10Anomaly Detection Techniques and ApplicationsNetwork Security and Intrusion DetectionFault Detection and Control Systems

Adaptive learning anomaly detection and classification model for cyber and physical threats in industrial control systems

Open access
Ahmadi‐Assalemi, Gabriela, Al‐Khateeb, Haider, Benson, Vladlena, Adamyk, Bogdan, Ammi, Meryem·2025·IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications

Abstract

Abstract A surge of digital technologies adopted into Industrial Control Systems (ICS) exposes critical infrastructures to increasingly hostile and well‐organised cybercrime. The increased need for flexibility and convenient administration expands the attack surface. Likewise, an insider with authorised access reveals a difficult‐to‐detect attack vector. Because of the range of critical services that ICS provide, disruptions to operations could have devastating consequences making ICS an attractive target for sophisticated threat actors. Hence, the authors introduce a novel anomalous behaviour detection model for ICS data streams from physical plant sensors. A model for one‐class classification is developed, using stream rebalancing followed by adaptive machine learning algorithms coupled with drift detection methods to detect anomalies from physical plant sensor data. The authors’ approach is shown on ICS datasets. Additionally, a use case illustrates the model's applicability to post‐incident investigations as part of a defence‐in‐depth capability in ICS. The experimental results show that the proposed model achieves an overall Matthews Correlation Coefficient score of 0.999 and Cohen's Kappa score of 0.9986 on limited variable single‐type anomalous behaviour per data stream. The results on wide data streams achieve an MCC score of 0.981 and a K score of 0.9808 in the prevalence of multiple types of anomalous instances.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1049/cps2.70004

Cites

92 of 92 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The strong reliance on learned correlation profiles implies that significant operating-mode changes, reconfigurations, or sensor upgrades can cause correlation shifts that resemble attacks, requiring adaptive learning, mode-aware modeling, and careful thresholding to avoid false alarms.

    “At the same time, the strong reliance on learned correlation profiles implies that significant operating-mode changes, reconfigurations, or sensor upgrades can cause correlation shifts that resemble attacks, requiring adaptive learning, mode-aware modeling, and careful thresholding to avoid false alarms [91,96,98].”

    From AI-Based Anomaly Detection in Industrial Control and Cyber–Physical Systems: A Data-Type-Oriented Systematic Review (2025) · cites this paper as [91]

    Split into 2 atoms — 0 confirmed, 2 partially supported, 0 disputed, 0 misattributed, 0 unverifiable. Expand the claim to see per-atom verdicts.

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • By focusing on joint behavior across multiple sensors and control channels, correlation-based detectors can better separate cyber-physical attacks (which often produce inconsistent or coordinated manipulation patterns) from natural faults (which follow typical failure correlations or fault signatures).

    “By focusing on joint behavior across multiple sensors and control channels, correlation-based detectors can better separate cyber-physical attacks, which often produce inconsistent or coordinated manipulation patterns, from natural faults that follow typical failure correlations or fault signatures [91,95,96,100,101].”

    From AI-Based Anomaly Detection in Industrial Control and Cyber–Physical Systems: A Data-Type-Oriented Systematic Review (2025) · cites this paper as [91]

    Split into 2 atoms — 0 confirmed, 2 partially supported, 0 disputed, 0 misattributed, 0 unverifiable. Expand the claim to see per-atom verdicts.

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • The dataset distribution for sensor-correlation-based methods shows heavy evaluation on SWaT, WADI, GHL, HAI, TE, and power-system benchmarks (IEEE bus systems), with additional evidence from gas-pipeline, GRFICSv2/Factory I/O, and aNormalies-based testbeds.

    “Finally, the dataset distribution indicates that sensor-correlation-based methods are heavily evaluated on SWaT, WADI, GHL, HAI, TE, and power-system benchmarks (IEEE bus systems), with additional evidence from gas-pipeline, GRFICSv2/Factory I/O, and aNormalies-based testbeds [88-96,98-102,104-110].”

    From AI-Based Anomaly Detection in Industrial Control and Cyber–Physical Systems: A Data-Type-Oriented Systematic Review (2025) · cites this paper as [91]

    Section 4.3 (‘The datasets’) says the paper evaluates the aNomalies and HAI datasets, supporting those examples in the citation group. It does not establish the claimed overall distribution of evaluations for sensor-correlation-based methods or document evaluations on the other named benchmarks. (LLM, conf=0.83)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 5

  1. Schrecker, S., et al.: Industrial Internet of Things Volume G4: Security Framework, pp. 1-173. Ind. Internet Consort (2016). https://www. iiconsortium.org/pdf/IIC_PUB_G4_V1.00_PB.pdf. [Online],Accessed 28 December 2020 Available:
  2. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., Seattle (2001). https://doi.org/10.5555/1642194.1642224 · DOI
  3. Bifet, A., et al.: MOA: massive online analysis, a framework for stream classification and clustering. In: Proceedings of the First Workshop on Applications of Pattern Analysis, Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, pp. 44--50. PMLR (2010). https://proceedings.mlr.press/ v11/bifet10a.html. Accessed: 23 08 2021
  4. Guarino, L, S.F.; Setola, R.; Flammini, F.: A hardware-in-the-loop water distribution testbed (WDT) dataset for cyber-physical security testing, (2021), https://doi.org/10.21227/rbvf-2h90 · DOI
  5. Shin, H.-K., et al.: {HAI} 1.0: HIL-based augmented {ICS} security dataset. In: 13th {USENIX} Workshop on Cyber Security Experi- mentation and Test ({CSET} 20) (2019). https://github.com/ icsdataset/hai. Accessed: 15 03 2021

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Ahmadi‐Assalemi, G., Al‐Khateeb, H., Benson, V., Adamyk, B., & Ammi, M.
Affiliations
  • Aston University (GB)
  • Naif Arab University for Security Sciences (SA)
Corresponding author
Al‐Khateeb, Haider
Venue
IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications
Published
2025-01
Volume
10
Issue
1
ISSN
2398-3396 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W4407584683
Cited by
10
References
77
Citations by year
2026: 6 · 2025: 4
FWCI
3.98
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • IET Cyber-Physical Systems Theory & Applications (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Aston Publications Explorer (Aston University) (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Anomaly Detection Techniques and Applications
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Network Security and Intrusion Detection
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Control and Systems Engineering › Fault Detection and Control Systems
Keywords
industrial control systems, anomaly detection, cyber-physical threats, insider threats, one-class classification, adaptive machine learning, concept drift detection, sensor data streams, defense-in-depth, critical infrastructure security

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review