Early and Often: Mitigating Security Vulnerabilities in Developing Nuclear Security Technologies through Adversarial Vulnerability Assessments

The development of successful nuclear security technology for domestic and international applications relies on its ability to be both secure and verifiable, regardless of who, where, how, and when they are utilized. Unfortunately, it is often only after the equipment becomes ready-for-use that weaknesses in design or operation are discovered or even searched for, causing the technology to be unreliable or unable to be verified. This creates a lack of confidence in the technology’s ability to track, detect, and safeguard nuclear material. However, adversarial vulnerability assessments (AVA) can mitigate these concerns if applied early and often throughout the developmental process. After over a decade of performing AVAs on over a thousand different security technologies, Argonne National Laboratory’s (ANL) Vulnerability Assessment Team (VAT) have found that when AVAs are employed, they often catch potential vulnerabilities and can offer countermeasures to mitigate the discovered issues during the product development cycle. The goal of an AVA is to discover and demonstrate solutions that prevent surreptitious activities aimed at gaining access to secured content. Such activities may include opening, bypassing, counterfeiting, or fooling equipment. AVAs can act as a proactive technique to discover flaws before the equipment is fielded. This is typically less costly than mitigating discovered vulnerabilities on equipment already in use, which is a more reactive approach to safeguards. This paper will discuss the current challenges and security concerns in nuclear security technologies and how AVAs may be used to mitigate these issues.