Page 45 - European Energy Innovation - Summer 2017 publication

Summer 2017 European Energy Innovation 45
SEGRID
Partners
while providing guidance and
enhancements for use in Smart
Grids. The SRMM is supported by a
tool and by practical guidance for
each step of the method. The SRMM
applies a stakeholder oriented
approach which takes into account
the dependency between Smart
Grid stakeholders.
• Vulnerability threat modelling – A
vulnerability threat modelling tool
models a network architecture and
all of its components and simulates
how difficult it is for cyber-attacks to
be successful. SEGRID has proposed
enhancements to an existing tool
called securiCAD, to make it more 2
suitable for use in Smart Grids and
for use in operational environments,
so that changes in a network
architecture can be instantaneously
fed into the model and analyzed.
• Security and Privacy Architecture
DEsign (SPADE) – The SPADE
iterative process has been conceived
to design, validate and evaluate
security and privacy architectures
for Smart Grid systems. The SPADE
process produces as final outcome
a security and privacy architecture,
ready to be deployed to fulfill the
identified security and privacy
requirements, employing Security-
by-Design and Privacy-by-Design
approaches.
Based on Risk assessments that were
conducted, the following security
measures were developed and tested:
• Resilient SCADA system –
Supervisory Control and Data
Acquisition (SCADA) systems
form the backbone of critical
infrastructures. One of the major
threats of SCADA systems is an
attacker that gains access to the
SCADA system, which can result in
a catastrophic scenario. In SEGRID,
www.europeanenergyinnovation.eu
COMMUNICATION
Distribution System
Operators
Manufacturers
Knowledge institutes
Universities
Figure 2: SEGRID project partners
we have developed a SCADA system
that is able to operate correctly
even under intrusions. The key idea
is to replicate the SCADA system,
allowing replicas to deterministically
execute the same sequence of
requests (e.g., operator commands)
in such a way that, despite the
failure of a fraction of the replicas,
the remaining ones have the same
state and ensure correctness of the
offered services.
• Resilient communication
infrastructure – Smart Grid
applications are typically run in
equipment inside the (primary)
substation and are connected to e.g.
the head end system. In SEGRID,
we have focused on improving the
resilience of the communications
outside of the substation, as these
are spread over large geographical
areas, and consequently are more
prone to failures. We have designed
and implemented a new Software
Defined Network (SDN) based
solution to manage the network,
which connects the primary
substations to the control center(s)
of a DSO.
• Improved resource management
for (D)TLS – In Smart Grid systems,
the TLS and DTLS protocols emerge
as the de-facto solutions for secure
communication between for
instance, SCADA units and RTUs in
secondary substations. However,
the protocol suffers from a severe
security vulnerability, which makes
(D)TLS servers highly exposed to
a Denial of Service (DoS) attack.
SEGRID has proposed a solution that
neutralizes the DoS attack described
above. The proposed solution does
not break current standards, and
has been successfully tested on real
RTUs communicating over a secure
DTLS channel.
This work was funded by The EC as
part of the EU FP7 SEGRID project
under Framework 7 agreement 607109.
The views expressed are purely those
of the authors and may not in any
circumstances be regarded as stating
an official position of the EC. ●
Contact details:
The SEGRID project: www.segrid.eu
Reinder Wolthuis, project
coordinator
Senior project manager and
consultant cybersecurity
Email: reinder.wolthuis@tno.nl
Tel.: +31 651 913 379