Phase-Bound Authority Enforcement in Cyber-Physical Systems

Description This work addresses a recurring class of security incidents in cyber-physical environments where installations behave correctly at the signal level yet fail at the authority level. Common examples include replayed credentials, emulated control devices, and context-inappropriate commands that trigger legitimate actions at unintended times. The framework described here treats authority as a lifecycle-bound property rather than an attribute of individual inputs. System behavior is governed by explicit state regimes (“phases”) and invariant references that determine whether an action may be committed, deferred, or rejected. Under this model, anomalous or repeated inputs lead to containment or suspension rather than silent escalation. This document is intentionally limited to structural principles. It does not describe countermeasures against specific tools, does not provide implementation guidance, and does not claim to replace cryptographic, physical, or network-level security controls. Instead, it defines a complementary integrity layer that constrains the consequences of misuse even in the presence of valid signals.