Wednesday, February 16, 2011

How to Secure the Smart Grid Network Infrastructure?

Andrew K. Wright, Paul Kalv, and Rodrick Sibery have published an excellent paper with the title "Interoperability and Security for Converged Smart Grid Networks".

The conclude: " While modern computing and technologies are now widely used throughout control centers and utility enterprise environments, field communications equipment largely uses outdated technologies. By deploying a converged smart grid network, utilities like ... can modernize their communications infrastructure, deploy new applications such as AMI and Distribution Automation, and adopt an architecture that is based on standards and supports interoperability based on Internet Protocol. Interoperability will allow them to replace individual subsystems that become out of date as technology evolves, without requiring forklift upgrades. Converged smart grid networks will require strong logical separation of traffic to ensure security of smart grid applications, and this will be best provided by a defense-in-depth architecture that considers security across all layers of the IP stack."

Click HERE for downloading the excellent paper [pdf, 1.5MB]

Recall the following statement I posted the other day "NAMUR expects that this clear statement and the requirements formulated will enable all those involved in the standardisation process to work together constructively with a view to achieving a converged [added by Karlheinz - Wireless Fieldbus] standard.")

Click HERE for the discussion of the Wireless Fieldbus (NAMUR, ...).

From the view point of information models, configuration Language, information exchange services and (IP-based) protocols we have reached a very high level of convergence with IEC 61850 - including the security measures as defined in IEC 62351.

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