Cyber Attack Challenges and Resilience for Smart Grids

A smart grid system supports intelligent metering and monitoring functions spanning the areas of power generation, transmission and distribution. It has enormous benefits for meeting the energy demands and billing requirements through controls at the supply side rather than at the demand side. This departure from the traditional perspective makes it a very attractive transformation for both developing and developed economies. However, a major drawback is the increased vulnerability of the highly connected system and knock-on ramifications on various related sub systems and networks. With the connectivity emerge the associated dangers of exposed system entry points through nodes located at various geographical locations; making an easy target for a motivated hacker. Starting at the compromised node, the inner system can be penetrated and its core functionality can be compromised. There is thus a need for having a system wide resilience in the design and architecture to meet these challenges. This paper reviews the vulnerabilities and resilience strategies for a smart grid and proposes the combined use of macro and micro management techniques as an evolutionary process to enhance system availability.