Smart Grid Technologies in Europe: An Overview

The old electricity network infrastructure has proven to be inadequate, with respect to modern challenges such as alternative energy sources, electricity demand and energy saving policies. Moreover, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) seem to have reached an adequate level of reliability and flexibility in order to support a new concept of electricity network—the smart grid. In this work, we will analyse the state-of-the-art of smart grids, in their technical, management, security, and optimization aspects. We will also provide a brief overview of the regulatory aspects involved in the development of a smart grid, mainly from the viewpoint of the European Unio

Cyber Attack Challenges and Resilience for Smart Grids

Date of Acceptance: 31/08/2015Peer reviewedPostprin

Big Data Analysis-based Security Situational Awareness for Smart Grid

Advanced communications and data processing technologies bring great benefits to the smart grid. However, cyber-security threats also extend from the information system to the smart grid. The existing security works for smart grid focus on traditional protection and detection methods. However, a lot of threats occur in a very short time and overlooked by exiting security components. These threats usually have huge impacts on smart gird and disturb its normal operation. Moreover, it is too late to take action to defend against the threats once they are detected, and damages could be difficult to repair. To address this issue, this paper proposes a security situational awareness mechanism based on the analysis of big data in the smart grid. Fuzzy cluster based analytical method, game theory and reinforcement learning are integrated seamlessly to perform the security situational analysis for the smart grid. The simulation and experimental results show the advantages of our scheme in terms of high efficiency and low error rate for security situational awareness

Role of artificial intelligence in cloud computing, IoT and SDN: Reliability and scalability issues

Information technology fields are now more dominated by artificial intelligence, as it is playing a key role in terms of providing better services. The inherent strengths of artificial intelligence are driving the companies into a modern, decisive, secure, and insight-driven arena to address the current and future challenges. The key technologies like cloud, internet of things (IoT), and software-defined networking (SDN) are emerging as future applications and rendering benefits to the society. Integrating artificial intelligence with these innovations with scalability brings beneficiaries to the next level of efficiency. Data generated from the heterogeneous devices are received, exchanged, stored, managed, and analyzed to automate and improve the performance of the overall system and be more reliable. Although these new technologies are not free of their limitations, nevertheless, the synthesis of technologies has been challenged and has put forth many challenges in terms of scalability and reliability. Therefore, this paper discusses the role of artificial intelligence (AI) along with issues and opportunities confronting all communities for incorporating the integration of these technologies in terms of reliability and scalability. This paper puts forward the future directions related to scalability and reliability concerns during the integration of the above-mentioned technologies and enable the researchers to address the current research gaps

Cyber resilience, a survey of case studies

Considering the potential magnitude and impact of cyber-attacks, organizations must be able to understand their capabilities to prevent, respond and re-cover from these attacks as well to implement and refine adequate resilience plans. Due to the importance of cyber resilience, this survey aimed to review relevant case studies published in the scientific literature. The identified case studies followed different approaches since some of them were focused on risk assessment and risk management processes and the complexity of their implementation, while others were focused on the use of well-known frameworks to assess cyber resilience or on proposing new cyber resilience frameworks and tools.publishe

Military and Security Applications: Cybersecurity (Encyclopedia of Optimization, Third Edition)

The domain of cybersecurity is growing as part of broader military and security applications, and the capabilities and processes in this realm have qualities and characteristics that warrant using solution methods in mathematical optimization. Problems of interest may involve continuous or discrete variables, a convex or non-convex decision space, differing levels of uncertainty, and constrained or unconstrained frameworks. Cyberattacks, for example, can be modeled using hierarchical threat structures and may involve decision strategies from both an organization or individual and the adversary. Network traffic flow, intrusion detection and prevention systems, interconnected human-machine interfaces, and automated systems – these all require higher levels of complexity in mathematical optimization modeling and analysis. Attributes such as cyber resiliency, network adaptability, security capability, and information technology flexibility – these require the measurement of multiple characteristics, many of which may involve both quantitative and qualitative interpretations. And for nearly every organization that is invested in some cybersecurity practice, decisions must be made that involve the competing objectives of cost, risk, and performance. As such, mathematical optimization has been widely used and accepted to model important and complex decision problems, providing analytical evidence for helping drive decision outcomes in cybersecurity applications. In the paragraphs that follow, this chapter highlights some of the recent mathematical optimization research in the body of knowledge applied to the cybersecurity space. The subsequent literature discussed fits within a broader cybersecurity domain taxonomy considering the categories of analyze, collect and operate, investigate, operate and maintain, oversee and govern, protect and defend, and securely provision. Further, the paragraphs are structured around generalized mathematical optimization categories to provide a lens to summarize the existing literature, including uncertainty (stochastic programming, robust optimization, etc.), discrete (integer programming, multiobjective, etc.), continuous-unconstrained (nonlinear least squares, etc.), continuous-constrained (global optimization, etc.), and continuous-constrained (nonlinear programming, network optimization, linear programming, etc.). At the conclusion of this chapter, research implications and extensions are offered to the reader that desires to pursue further mathematical optimization research for cybersecurity within a broader military and security applications context

Analiza povezanosti pametnih mest s policijsko in kriminalistično dejavnostjo

Purpose: The main objective is to present the symbiosis between smart cities, policing, criminal investigation and criminal intelligence. Moreover, another purpose is to critically address the underlying privacy concerns arising from smart city designs. Design/Methods/Approach: The paper is theoretical in scope and utilises a literature review as the basic method. Correlations between smart cities, policing and criminal investigations are identified by analysing the applicability of core smart city technologies and services [SCTS]. Findings: It is evident that SCTS can influence policing styles and police effectiveness. SCTS hold great potential for criminal investigations and criminal intelligence as they provide information upon which police can develop investigations or crime-control strategies. Vice-versa, criminal investigations and criminal intelligence can provide guidelines for SCTS developers and the governance of smart cities. However, privacy concerns and the slowly developing regulatory framework remain the biggest issues when it comes to SCTS adoption, thus making measures to safeguard privacy a key factor for the legitimacy of smart cities and smart policing. Practical Implications: The paper introduces practical knowledge about the implications of smart cities for policing and crime investigation. Some research ideas are presented as well as suggestions for legislators, developers and others whose work area falls in the scope of (smart) city governance. Originality/Value: A comprehensive study of the symbiosis between smart cities and policing must not only consider the potential of SCTS but the related need to develop regulation and skillsets of human resources. Only a handful of papers address the connectivity of smart cities, criminal investigations and criminal intelligence from such a multidisciplinary scope. Therefore, the paper represents a contribution to works discussing these concepts.Namen prispevka: Namen prispevka je predstaviti simbiozo med pametnimi mesti, policijsko dejavnostjo, kriminalističnim preiskovanjem in kriminalističnoobveščevalno dejavnostjo. V tem kontekstu je podan tudi kritični razmislek o izzivih in dilemah, povezanih z varstvom zasebnosti. Metode: Prispevek je teoretične narave in temelji na pregledu literature. Korelacije med temeljnimi pojmi (pametna mesta, policijska in kriminalistična dejavnost) smo identificirali z analizo temeljnih tehnologij, sistemov in storitev, ki podpirajo delovanje pametnih mest. Ugotovitve: Tehnologije pametnih mest omogočajo razvoj novih oblik policijskega dela in imajo potencial za izboljšanje policijske učinkovitosti. Funkcionalnost tehnologij je razvidna tudi na področju kriminalistične dejavnosti, ki lahko z obdelovanjem podatkov in njihovo uporabo bolje načrtuje kriminalistične preiskave in razvija strategije preprečevanja kriminalitete. Simbioza je opazna tudi z nasprotnega vidika – s podajanjem smernic lahko kriminalistična in policijska dejavnost pomagata upravljavcem pametnih mest in razvojnikom tehnologij ter rešitev. Glavni izziv predstavlja varovanje zasebnosti in osebnih podatkov prebivalcev, zato so mehanizmi za preprečevanje zlorab ključni faktor legitimnosti pametnih mest in policijske dejavnosti. Praktična uporabnost: V prispevku so predstavljena uporabna znanja glede potencialov pametnih mest za izvajanje policijske in kriminalistične dejavnosti, prav tako tudi predlogi za raziskovalce in oblikovalce politik, razvojnike in druge, ki delujejo na področju upravljanja (pametnih) mest. Izvirnost/pomembnost prispevka: Če želimo razumeti sistem dejavnikov, ki vplivajo na simbiozo med policijsko dejavnostjo in pametnimi mesti, je treba upoštevati ne samo potenciale različnih tehnologij in rešitev, temveč tudi potrebe in dileme, ki se pojavijo sočasno s tehnološkim razvojem, primarno na področju razvoja kadrovskih kompetenc in prilagoditve normativnih okvirjev. Pregled literature pokaže, da obstajajo redke znanstvene objave, ki multidimenzionalno proučujejo simbiozo pametnih mest in policijske dejavnosti. Prispevek zato dopolnjuje obstoječa dela in znanja na tem področju