A Testbed to Evaluate Next-Generation Security Solutions in Cyber-Physical Systems using Hardware Acceleration

At the core of modern manufacturing systems lie Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) that prioritize operational continuity over security, resulting in a rising number of cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructures. This paper presents a work-in-progress testbed that modernizes Smart Manufacturing Systems (SMS) by integrating Domain-Specific Accelerators (DSAs)—Data Processing Units (DPUs) and Programmable Data Plane (PDP) switches—to strengthen Operational Technology (OT) security without compromising availability or reliability. These accelerators provide fine-grained visibility, real-time anomaly detection, and efficient policy enforcement at line rate. Preliminary results show that accelerator-based applications outperform CPU-based implementations by several orders of magnitude. Demonstrated use cases include a DPU that performs memory inspection via Direct Memory Access (DMA) to detect injected anomalies and a PDP that implements inline detection using pre-trained Machine Learning (ML) models. With low processing overhead, the system also enables continuous telemetry collection for digital-twin generation without disrupting critical operations. The testbed, deployed on the South Carolina Cloud (SC Cloud), offers remote access for developing and evaluating next-generation CPS and OT security applications.