The Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a new report on Feb. 14 that highlights potential use cases of digital twin technologies and recommends adopting a zero trust cybersecurity model when engaging in digital twin development.
The report detailed trust concerns that digital twin tech approaches raise including those related to manufacturing defects, functional equivalence, and accuracy.
NIST also highlights that many components of digital twin technologies are already in use in areas including drone technologies, oil drilling, and robotic surgery.
The report defines digital twins as “the virtual (i.e., digital) representation of a physical or perceived real-world entity, concept, or notion.”
NIST emphasized several advantages of implementing digital twin technologies into real-world operations including using the approach to reduce risk by modeling and monitoring an object throughout its life cycle.
“One can study the object via its model prior to building the real-world version, study the object as it progresses through its life cycle, and conceivably control the object through the model to prevent undesirable outcomes for the object, thus reducing certain types of risk,” the report reads.
The report also points to several cybersecurity issues digital twins raise. These concerns include the instrumentation of objects, centralization of object measurements, visualization of object operation, remote control of objects, and standards that allow for universal access and control.
The report says that all these threats are inherent in the use of digital twins technologies and cannot be separated from their typical use. To respond to the ever-present threats posed by digital twin technologies, NIST recommends adopting a zero-trust model.
“Even the most secure networks have some connections to the outside world, even if they are not persistent,” the report reads. “It is best to plan cybersecurity around a zero-trust model where everything does its best to protect itself against everything else,” the report adds.
NIST offered 14 considerations to monitor trust throughout the digital twins landscape. Some of the areas NIST suggests include environment, complexity, and accuracy of an object. The report also recommends monitoring non-functional requirements, the heterogeneity of standards, and complexity of operations.
“Here, trust is viewed as a level of confidence that a digital twin is functionally equivalent to a physical object, that a specified digital twin can be composed with another digital twin, that enough information is available about the environment and context of the physical object, that a specific digital twin can be composed with another digital twin, and that the digital twin can be standardized to the point where certification of a digital twin is possible,” the report reads.
