Cybersecurity Solutions for Active Power Distribution Networks

An active distribution network (ADN) is an electrical-power distribution network that implements a real-time monitoring and control of the electrical resources and the grid. Effective monitoring and control in an ADN is realised by deploying a large number of sensing and actuating intelligent electronic devices (IEDs) and a reliable two-way communication infrastructure that facilitates the transfer of measurement data, as well as control and protection signals. The reliance of ADN operations on a large number of electronic devices and on pervasive communication networks poses an unprecedented challenge in protecting the system against cyber-attacks emanating from outsiders and insiders. Identifying these different challenges and commissioning appropriate security solutions to counter them is of utmost importance for the realization of the full potential of a smart grid that seamlessly integrates distributed generation, such as renewable energy sources, at the distribution level. As a first step towards achieving this goal, we perform a thorough threat analysis of a typical ADN automation system. We identify all potential threats against field devices, the communication infrastructure and servers at control centers. We also propose a check-list of security solutions and best practices that guarantee a distribution network’s resilient operation in the presence of malicious attackers, natural disasters, and other unintended failures that could potentially lead to islanding. For the next step, we focus on investigating the security aspects of Multi-Protocol Label Switching Transport Profile (MPLS-TP), a technology that is mainly used for long-distance communication between control centers and between control centers and substations. Our findings show that an MPLS-TP implementation in Cisco IOS has serious security vulnerabilities in two of its protocols, bidirectional forwarding detection (BFD) and protection state coordination (PSC). These two protocols control protection-switching features in MPLS-TP. In our test-bed, we demonstrate that an attacker who has physical access to the network can exploit the vulnerabilities in the protocols in order to inject forged BFD or PSCmessages that will lead to disruption of application data communication. Third, we consider source-authentication problem for multicast communication of synchrophasor data in grid monitoring systems (GMS). Given resource constrained multicast sources, ensuring source authentication without violating the stringent real-time requirement of GMS is a challenging problem. In our effort to identify a suitable multicast authentication schemes, we set out by making an extensive review of existing authentication schemes and identifying a set of schemes that satisfy some desirable properties for GMS. The identified schemes are ECDSA, TV-HORS and Incompletekey-set. The comparison metrics are