A conceptual framework for securing industrial control systems: smart grid environment

Author(s):  
Saqib Ali ◽  
Mohammed Al Abri
2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
pp. 1740001 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEAN-PIERRE AUFFRET ◽  
JANE L. SNOWDON ◽  
ANGELOS STAVROU ◽  
JEFFREY S. KATZ ◽  
DIANA KELLEY ◽  
...  

The extensive integration of interconnected devices and the inadvertent information obtained from untrusted sources has exposed the Industrial Control Systems (ICS) ecosystem to remote attacks by the exploitation of new and old vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, although recognized as an emerging risk based on the recent rise of cyber attacks, cybersecurity for ICS has not been addressed adequately both in terms of technology but, most importantly, in terms of organizational leadership and policy. In this paper, we will present our findings regarding the cybersecurity challenges for Smart Grid and ICS and the need for changes in the way that organizations perceive cybersecurity risk and leverage resources to balance the needs for information security and operational security. Moreover, we present empirical data that point to cybersecurity governance and technology principles that can help public and private organizations to navigate successfully the technical cybersecurity challenges for ICS and Smart Grid systems. We believe that by identifying and mitigating the inherent risks in their systems, operations, and processes, enterprises will be in a better position to shield themselves and protect against current and future cyber threats.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Leonardi ◽  
K. Mathioudakis ◽  
A. Wiesmaier ◽  
F. Zeiger

This paper deals with Industrial Control Systems (ICS) of the electrical sector and especially on the Smart Grid. This sector has been particularly active at establishing new standards to improve interoperability between all sector players, driven by the liberalization of the market and the introduction of distributed generation of energy. The paper provides a state-of-the-art analysis on architectures, technologies, communication protocols, applications, and information standards mainly focusing on substation automation in the transmission and distribution domain. The analysis shows that there is tremendous effort from the Smart Grid key stakeholders to improve interoperability across the different components managing an electrical grid, from field processes to market exchanges, allowing the information flowing more and more freely across applications and domains and creating opportunity for new applications that are not any more constraint to a single domain.


2012 ◽  
Vol 263-266 ◽  
pp. 3168-3173
Author(s):  
Xiu Li Huang ◽  
Tao Zhang ◽  
Yuan Yuan Ma ◽  
Yu Fei Wang ◽  
Ye Hua

With the increasing number of attacks against industrial control systems, functions security issues of the smart grid industrial control system gradually become the focus of research in the field of smart grid. This paper introduced smart grid industrial control systems threats which faced and incidents firstly, and analyzed the current situation of the functional safety certification, including certification bodies, certification tools and certification classes; Then, researched the smart grid industrial control system functional safety certification, gave the content of the smart grid industrial control system functional safety certification, and made the design of its hardware evaluation process; Finally, we discuss the research status of functional safety certification, and pointed out the problems that the smart grid industrial control system functional safety faces.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (17) ◽  
pp. 5501
Author(s):  
Chenyang Liu ◽  
Yazeed Alrowaili ◽  
Neetesh Saxena ◽  
Charalambos Konstantinou

Cybersecurity threats targeting industrial control systems (ICS) have significantly increased in the past years. Moreover, the need for users/operators to understand the consequences of attacks targeting these systems and protect all assets is vital. This work explores asset discovery in ICS and how to rank these assets based on their criticality. This paper also discusses asset discovery and its components. We further present existing solutions and tools for asset discovery. We implement a method to identify critical assets based on their connection and discuss related results and evaluation. The evaluation utilises four attack scenarios to stress the importance of protecting these critical assets since the failure to protect them can lead to serious consequences. Using a 12-bus system case, our results show that targeting such a system can increase and overload transmission lines values to 120% and 181% MVA, which can affect the power supply and disrupt service, and it can increase the cost up to 60%, affecting the productivity of this electric grid.


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