Session

Track: Strategy and Business Value

Building Cybersecurity Resilience in Public Agencies
Carrie Dossick

Digitalization is transforming the ways we manage public infrastructure.

Digital twin technology, where real-time digital replicas of physical infrastructure, such as bridges or tunnels, enable remote monitoring, predictive maintenance and more efficient management, reducing the need for physical inspections and minimizing downtime. However, this transformation also has created opportunities for malicious actors to exploit vulnerabilities and launch damaging cyberattacks.

Recent industry and government reports highlight a rise in cybersecurity threats in the United States, with the government being the primary target due to the sensitive data it manages and its critical roles in national security and critical infrastructure.

A recent incident in August 2024 at Sea-Tac International Airport, one of the busiest in the state, underscores these concerns. The airport experienced a cyberattack that necessitated the shutdown of all computer systems supporting its operations, leading to significant repercussions, including operational delays, passenger inconvenience, and substantial financial losses. Despite ongoing investigations, the identity of the attackers remains unclear.

Traditionally, cybersecurity was viewed as the domain of IT departments, focusing on technical solutions like firewalls and antivirus programs. However, there is a growing recognition among researchers and practitioners that cybersecurity must also be addressed from an inter-agency and managerial perspective, leading to the concept of cybersecurity culture. This shift recognizes that cybersecurity is not merely a technical challenge but a holistic organizational issue that requires the involvement of all stakeholders.

Research is needed to explore the most effective ways to address cybersecurity within organizations and identify best practices to mitigate the risk of cyberattacks. In response to these challenges, Federal, State, and local agencies need to develop comprehensive Cybersecurity Roadmaps to identify key risks, strategies, and recommendations to foster a robust cybersecurity culture. These roadmaps will serve as the foundation for a discussion designed to enhance cybersecurity awareness among government personnel, focusing on the secure use of digital tools across the department’s technology stack, including emerging technologies like digital twins and IoT.

In this presentation, we will explore ongoing research focused on developing a Cybersecurity Roadmap, highlighting its essential role in the modernization of public infrastructure management. We will use the framework of the Cyber project as a foundation to delve into the key components of this roadmap, including comprehensive risk assessment, strategic prioritization, and the effective implementation of security measures.

AI-powered Cognitive Digital Twins for Facilities to Ensure Mission Success for the Space Force
Dr. Ivan Panushev & Luke Reeve

For the U.S. Space Force, the operational efficiency of its Space Operations Command (SpOC) facilities and equipment is crucial for mission success. This success is heavily dependent on the reliable and predictable performance of these systems, making it essential that the Space Force be able to monitor their performance in real time to understand performance trends and be able to predict when maintenance is needed or failures may occur. This ensures that facilities operation crucial to mission success is never interrupted. However, doing so over such a complex system of assets poses a significant challenge for the Space Force SpOC team.

To address this critical challenge, the U.S. Space Force has teamed up with TwinKnowledge (TK) to develop interactive cognitive digital twins (CDT) specifically designed to enhance facility asset management and optimization. These CDTs will enable AI-driven performance modeling of major building systems and assets on Space Force military bases, including cooling, power, and HVAC, which are vital for maintaining operational integrity and efficiency in space-related activities.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) models on the TK platform will deliver a dynamic, interactive cognitive twin of the physical infrastructure, allowing for comprehensive facility space planning, what-if scenario analyses for load and resiliency, and real-time monitoring of critical system nodes. With TwinKnowledge facilities CDTs, the Space Force will be able to achieve unprecedented levels of operational insight and control through smart maintenance protocols, failure identification workflows, and recommendation engines for preventative actions.

TwinKnowledge CDTs are powered by TK’s proprietary generative AI technology stack, a custom-built Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) software combined with state-of-the-art Large Language Models (LLMs) fine-tuned to understand the languages of construction, operations and maintenance, and facilities. With this technology, TK is able to take Space Force’s facilities information scattered across systems of record – BIM models, drawings sets, and text documents – and connect and unify them within a single knowledge base, turning information into actionable knowledge.

In this session, TwinKnowledge will discuss the facilities and operational needs of the Space Force, how TwinKnowledge and the Space Force are addressing this need with CDTs using Space Force’s existing facilities information, and how this work is setting the foundation for permanent systems and processes that will improve Space Force’s abilities to ensure operational efficiency of its Space Operations Command facilities and equipment for mission success.