The role of communication systems in smart grids: Architectures, technical solutions and research challenges

The purpose of this survey is to present a critical overview of smart grid concepts, with a special focus on the role that communication, networking and middleware technologies will have in the transformation of existing electric power systems into smart grids. First of all we elaborate on the key technological, economical and societal drivers for the development of smart grids. By adopting a data-centric perspective we present a conceptual model of communication systems for smart grids, and we identify functional components, technologies, network topologies and communication services that are needed to support smart grid communications. Then, we introduce the fundamental research challenges in this field including communication reliability and timeliness, QoS support, data management services, and autonomic behaviors. Finally, we discuss the main solutions proposed in the literature for each of them, and we identify possible future research directions

Survey in Smart Grid and Smart Home Security: Issues, Challenges and Countermeasures

The electricity industry is now at the verge of a new era. An era that promises, through the evolution of the existing electrical grids to Smart Grids, more efficient and effective power management, better reliability, reduced production costs and more environmentally friendly energy generation. Numerous initiatives across the globe, led by both industry and academia, reflect the mounting interest around the enormous benefits but also the great risks introduced by this evolution. This paper focuses on issues related to the security of the Smart Grid and the Smart Home, which we present as an integral part of the Smart Grid. Based on several scenarios we aim to present some of the most representative threats to the Smart Home / Smart Grid environment. The threats detected are categorized according to specific security goals set for the Smart Home/Smart Grid environment and their impact on the overall system security is evaluated. A review of contemporary literature is then conducted with the aim of presenting promising security countermeasures with respect to the identified specific security goals for each presented scenario. An effort to shed light on open issues and future research directions concludes the paper

Intrusion Detection for Smart Grid Communication Systems

Transformation of the traditional power grid into a smart grid hosts an array of vulnerabilities associated with communication networks. Furthermore, wireless mediums used throughout the smart grid promote an environment where Denial of Service (DoS) attacks are very effective. In wireless mediums, jamming and spoofing attack techniques diminish system operations thus affecting smart grid stability and posing an immediate threat to Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA) of the smart grid. Intrusion detection systems (IDS) serve as a primary defense in mitigating network vulnerabilities. In IDS, signatures created from historical data are compared to incoming network traffic to identify abnormalities. In this thesis, intrusion detection algorithms are proposed for attack detection in smart grid networks by means of physical, data link, network, and session layer analysis. Irregularities in these layers provide insight to whether the network is experiencing genuine or malicious activity

A Review of Performance, Energy and Privacy of Intrusion Detection Systems for IoT

Internet of Things (IoT) forms the foundation of next generation infrastructures, enabling development of future cities that are inherently sustainable. Intrusion detection for such paradigms is a non-trivial challenge which has attracted further significance due to extraordinary growth in the volume and variety of security threats for such systems. However, due to unique characteristics of such systems i.e., battery power, bandwidth and processor overheads and network dynamics, intrusion detection for IoT is a challenge, which requires taking into account the trade-off between detection accuracy and performance overheads. In~this context, we are focused at highlighting this trade-off and its significance to achieve effective intrusion detection for IoT. Specifically, this paper presents a comprehensive study of existing intrusion detection systems for IoT systems in three aspects: computational overhead, energy consumption and privacy implications. Through extensive study of existing intrusion detection approaches, we have identified open challenges to achieve effective intrusion detection for IoT infrastructures. These include resource constraints, attack complexity, experimentation rigor and unavailability of relevant security data. Further, this paper is envisaged to highlight contributions and limitations of the state-of-the-art within intrusion detection for IoT, and~aid the research community to advance it by identifying significant research directions