Smart Grid Cyber Security Challenges

Power grids worldwide are undergoing a revolutionary transition from a conventional grid to so-called “smart grids”.

This paper discusses cyber security challenges for a future smart grid. It highlights the evolution of SCADA system, deficiencies and shortcomings of existing power devices and identifies areas of urgent need particularly on the software side to establish cyber security system. Such actions are urgent in today's context due to integrated nature of power system covering generation, transmission and distribution, as a compromise of power systems can lead to power outages/blackout or even damage power system devices and thereby huge loss to the utilities. These challenges are highlighted in detail along with opportunities for cyber security specifically for a smarter grid, which can be generalized to the wider domain of cyber systems for power. Renewable energy/distributed generation demands are the added feature of Smart grid and due to networked control; future power system will be much more exposed to cyber-attacks. Hence, while we are discussing about establishing a smart grid it is pertinent to discusses cyber security challenges for a future power grid.

Due to the complexity of widely dispersed generating and delivery assets and the interdependency between computer, communication, and power systems, the requirement to meet security and quality compliance on the operations is a challenging issue. In recent years, North American Electric Reliability Corporation's (NERC) cyber security standard [1&2] was initiated to require utilities and system provider's compliance on cyber security in control systems -NERC CIP 1200.