Current Efforts Concerning ICT Security of the Power Grid

GRID is a Coordination Action funded under the Trust and Security objective of the IST Programme of the 6th Framework to achieve consensus at the European level on the key issues involved by power systems vulnerabilities, in view of the challenges driven by the transformation of the European power infrastructure and ICT integration. GRID wants to assess the needs of the EU power sector on these issues, so as to establish a Roadmap for collaborative research in this area. The present report provides a survey on current efforts somewhat related to the objectives of GRID. Similar to GRID, a number of European and US endeavours have attempted in recent years to draw a Road Map so as to coordinate efforts concerning energy transport/distribution research and CIP.JRC.G.6-Sensors, radar technologies and cybersecurit

A Bayesian Network Approach for the Interpretation of Cyber Attacks to Power Systems

The focus of this paper is on the analysis of the cyber security resilience of digital infrastructures deployed by power grids, internationally recognized as a priority since several recent cyber attacks targeted energy systems and in particular the power service. In response to the regulatory framework, this paper presents an analysis approach based on the Bayesian Networks formalism and on real world threat scenarios. Our approach enables analyses oriented to planning of security measures and monitoring, and to forecasting of adversarial behaviours

Analisi e rilevamento intelligente di processi di attacco alle Smart-Grid

Proponiamo una metodologia basata sulle Reti Bayesiane come strumento di supporto all’analisi della sicurezza di Smart Grid, ed in particolare per la previsione di intrusioni e attività ostili

Security Analysis of Power Control Systems: Emerging Standards and Methodological Issues

information and communication devices are an unavoidable concern of modern infrastructures. There is a generalized perception (although no major related catastrophe has happened yet) that the probability and potential impact of security breaches have grown heavily in recent years due to the increasing interconnectedness among systems and organisations. It is also recognised that potential chains of events, concatenated across interlinked infrastructures, could propagate magnifying the effects of perhaps minor triggering glitches. The primary role played by electric energy and the highly dynamic context that characterises the new economic and organisational models of national deregulated energy markets, put highly critical security issues on the power systems. This requires on the one hand robust technologies and architectures, and on the other effective methodologies for the assessment of the security risks. The importance of the security aspects in the electric power field is confirmed by the constitution of security working groups by standard organisations, such as the Working Group 15 “Data and communication security” (WG15) inside the Technical Committee No. 57 “Power system control and associated communications” of the IEC – International Electro-technical Commission (IEC TC57). IEC TC57 WG15 has published a Technical Report 62210 “Power system control and associated communications – Data and communication security” [1] which represents a valuable approach for introducing security in power system control. In this paper we present a contribution to the security analysis of power systems. Section 2 describes and comments on the IEC TR 62210 report; section 3 illustrates key aspects of our methodology under development.JRC.G.6-Sensors, radar technologies and cybersecurit

Evaluation of the Effects of Intentional Threats to Power Substation Control Systems

Power station control and management systems represent key elements for guaranteeing the security of the power grid infrastructure. Intrinsically conceived to support the continuous provision of power in secure conditions, those systems make today intensive use of network based information and communication systems and are therefore exposed to the related accidental and intentional cyber–threats. This paper describes a simulation of intentional cyber–attacks conducted in the CESI laboratory testbed on a prototypical substation control infrastructure with the purpose of testing their feasibility and illustrating their impact on the control system services. A set of attack scenarios has been experimented in the testbed, targeting different subsystems, with different simulated threat motivations and different degrees of impact on the global substation service. The paper reports some considerations about the consequences of the implemented attacks, focusing on different facets of the problem, in an effort to elucidate the full significance of the potential cyber–threats. The simulated attack scenarios include the following cases: phishing, denial of services, viral infections and intrusions.JRC.G.6-Sensors, radar technologies and cybersecurit

Big data from cellular networks: How to estimate energy demand at real-time

5nononeEfficient energy planning is a key feature for the future smart cities. The real-time optimization of the energy distribution and storage is the real added value for smart grid and cities. However, the available energy providers' infrastructures are not able to estimate and predict real-time fluctuation of the energy demand and are not scalable enough to integrate, with low cost and effort, hardware elements able to estimate energy demand in real-time. The solution proposed in this paper exploit heterogeneous big data sources to forecast in real-time energy demands without requiring physical interventions on the energy providers' infrastructures. The proposed approach is mainly based on the use of statistical models and cellular network big data to estimate in advance energy demand without observing the actual behaviour of the energy network. Distributor System Operators can use these estimations to self-manage the energy demand, distribution and storage in real-time, without any user intervention. The approach has been extensively validated in a real world case study for the Milan city, in the production infrastructure of Vodafone Italy and with all the Vodafone Mobile Users, and the quality of the probabilistic models in forecasting energy consumption is really promising.Tosi, Davide; Marzorati, Stefano; La Rosa, Mario; Dondossola, Giovanna; Terruggia, RobertaTosi, Davide; Marzorati, Stefano; La Rosa, Mario; Dondossola, Giovanna; Terruggia, Robert