**1.1 The challenges of cyberspace and ITS**

Cyberspace is a unique environment that easily and readily allows governments, criminals, terrorists, and even mischievous juveniles to mask their identity while they wreak havoc or disable a system [2]. Right now, the average breach in America takes around 5 months to discover [3, 4]. Public agencies historically relied on "security through obscurity" to avoid attack or exploitation, knowing that a system may be vulnerable, but relying on the thought that a system's weaknesses were not common knowledge and persons with malicious intent were unlikely to find them [5]. This approach worked relatively well prior to the digital revolution, but from the late 1990s on, agencies have switched to extremely common commercial technologies such as Wi-Fi and Ethernet for field devices (traffic signals, sensors, dynamic messaging signs, etc.) that communicate with central monitoring systems. This resulted in a significant increase in the attack surface of ITS and thus a significant increase in the risk to ITS.

Cybersecurity threats present themselves in a variety of ways. They may be:


The technologies that were once obsure and expensive are now readily available and low cost. As such, it has essentially eliminated any value from reliance on security through obscurity. The safe and efficient operation of a traffic management system relies largely on the application of advanced technologies [6]. And while new technologies have greatly enhanced how traffic signals work and efficiently operate, these
