NSERC/Hydro-Québec/Thales Industrial Research Chair in Smart Grid Security: Detection, Prevention, Mitigation and Recovery from Cyber-Physical Attacks

目前的电网被认为是二十世纪最好的工程成就之一。它被设计用来为各种消费领域提供电力。在很大程度上，它成功地实现了这一目标。尽管如此，电网在过去几年中经历了几次停电。特别是，在过去的40年里，发生了5次大停电，其中3次发生在过去的9年里。通过增加可再生能源的利用来确保电力安全、实现能源效率和促进环境保护的愿望正在推动部署智能电网的需求。据预测，这些智能电网将允许双向电力流以及新的方式来管理发电和不断增长的能源需求。智能电网的成功部署取决于能否保证其安全性。这一要求至关重要，因为电网对关键基础设施的几个组成部分至关重要。最近的网络安全事件和安全研究表明，电网可能会受到破坏性攻击，这可能会导致严重的安全和经济后果，甚至危及人类生命。此外，信息和通信技术的日益融合肯定会增加网络攻击面。利用这些漏洞可能会导致攻击，例如，扭曲状态信息，改变输电线路上定位事件或故障的能力，将电网置于更大风险的操作点。这将导致不良的和严重的后果，如财务损失，系统性损失的级联故障，大停电，等。本研究的主要目的是探讨智能电网域，组件，设备和协议的安全性：（1）引出安全要求;（2）识别攻击面与潜在的漏洞，威胁和他们的网络物理后果;（3）提出切实有效的检测、预防、缓解和恢复技术和方法，这些技术和方法肯定会加强和提高智能电网的整体安全性。

The current electric grid is considered as one of the best engineering achievements of the twentieth century. Itwas designed to deliver power to various consumer domains. To a large extent, it has been successful infulfilling this objective. Nevertheless, the electric grid has experienced several blackouts over the past years. Inparticular, there have been five major blackouts over the past forty years, three of which have occurred in thepast nine years alone. The aspiration to secure power, to achieve energy efficiency and to contribute toenvironment protection through the increasing utilization of renewable energies are driving the need to deploysmart grids. It is predicated that these smart grids will allow for bidirectional power flow as well as new waysto manage both power generation and the increasing energy demand. The successful deployment of smart gridsis predicated on the ability to guarantee their security. Such a requirement is of paramount importance sinceelectrical grids are essential to several components of the critical infrastructure. Recent cyber security incidentsand security research studies demonstrate that electrical grids could be subjected to disrupting attacks thatmight lead to severe security and economic consequences, and even to the endangerment and loss of humanlives. Furthermore, the increasing integration of ICT technologies will definitely augment cyber attacksurfaces. The exploitation of these vulnerabilities might lead to attacks that will, for instance, skew the stateinformation, alter the abilities to locate events or faults on transmission lines, place the grid at operating pointsthat are at greater risk from contingencies. This will lead to undesirable and severe consequences such asfinancial losses, systemic losses from cascading failures, major blackouts, etc. The primary intent of thisresearch is to explore the security of smart grid domains, components, devices and protocols to: (1) elicit thesecurity requirements; (2) identify the attack surfaces together with the underlying vulnerabilities, threats andtheir cyber physical consequences; (3) propose practical and efficient detection, prevention, mitigation andrecovery techniques and methodologies that will definitely harden and enhance the overall smart grid security.