Björn Leander, Industrial Doctoral Student


Björn Leander graduated as a M.Sc in Computer Science and Control Theory, from Luleå University of Technology in 2002. After several years working in different fields of software development, he was employed at ABB Process Control Platform in 2013, where he now is a cybersecurity engineer. In 2020 Björn received a tech.licentiate degree from MDU.

Industrial control systems are undergoing a transformation driven by business requirements as well as technical advances, aiming towards increased connectivity, flexibility, and high level of modularity. That implies a need to revise existing cybersecurity measures. The overarching goal for this research project is to investigate and provide secure and robust solutions supporting these emergent system characteristics.

The focus area of the project is on access control, which is one of the major security mechanisms in any system, and that is largely affected by these advances. One of the major challenges targeted by the project is how to handle the inherently dynamic properties of the future industrial control systems, which ideally should be mirrored by similar flexibility in the access control policy rules as well as enforcement architectures. This project is carried out in collaboration between ABB PA/PCP and MDU.

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Latest publications:

Evaluation of an OPC UA-based Access Control Enforcement Architecture (Sep 2024)
Björn Leander, Aida Causevic, Tomas Lindström , Hans Hansson
28th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS 2023)

Enhanced Simulation Environment to Support Research in Modular Manufacturing Systems (Oct 2023)
Björn Leander, Tijana Markovic, Miguel Leon Ortiz
49th Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society 2023 (IECON 2023)

An Authorization Service supporting Dynamic Access Control in Manufacturing Systems (Oct 2023)
Ivan Radonjic , Enna Basic , Björn Leander, Tijana Markovic
IEEE 9th World Forum on Internet of Things 2023 (WFIoT2023)

Dependability and Security aspects of Network-Centric Control (Sep 2023)
Björn Leander, Bjarne Johansson, Tomas Lindström , Olof Holmgren , Thomas Nolte, Alessandro Papadopoulos
28th International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA 2023)

Developing and Evaluating MQTT Connectivity for an Industrial Controller (Jun 2023)
Selma Opacin , Lejla Rizvanovic , Björn Leander, Aida Causevic, Saad Mubeen
11th International Conference on Cyber Physical Systems and IoT (CPS&IoT'23)

Access Control Enforcement Architectures for Dynamic Manufacturing Systems (Mar 2023)
Björn Leander, Aida Causevic, Tomas Lindström , Hans Hansson
20TH IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE (ICSA 2023)