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Smart Grid Security, Privacy, and Resilient

Architectures: Opportunities and Challenges
S. Massoud Amin, University of Minnesota (email: [email protected])

AbstractAny complex dynamic infrastructure network typically has many layers, decision-making units and is vulnerable to
various types of disturbances. Cyber connectivity has increased
the complexity of the control systems and facilities it is intended
to safely and reliably control. Thus, in order to defend electric
infrastructure against the impacts of cyber-physical attacks, significant challenges must be overcome before extensive deployment
and implementation of smart grid technologies can begin. Cyber
security and interoperability are two of the key challenges of the
smart grid transformation. As for security, it must be built-in as
part of its design and NOT glued on as afterthought.
Regarding recent cyber threat reports, it is fundamental to
separate hype from the truth. What is most concerning about
such reports is mainly one piece from an early article: The
response to the alert was mixed. An audit of 30 utility companies
that received the alert showed that only seven were in full
compliance, although all of the audited companies had taken
some precautions. This is the reality that needs to be addressed.
A key challenge is to enable secure and very high-confidence
sensing, communications, and control of a heterogeneous, widely
dispersed, yet globally interconnected system. It is even more
complex and difficult to control it for optimal efficiency and
maximum benefit to the ultimate consumers while still allowing
all its business components to compete fairly and freely. In
the electric power industry and other critical infrastructures,
new ways are being sought to improve network efficiency by
eliminating congestion problems without seriously diminishing
reliability and security.
Effective, intelligent, hierarchically distributed control is required within a layered defense architecture that would enable
parts of the networks to remain operational and even automatically reconfigure in the event of local failures or threats of failure.
Sensing, communication and control systems are needed across
broad temporal, geographical, and industry scalesfrom devices to
power-system-wide, from fuel sources to consumers, from utility
pricing to demand response, and so on. With increased deployment of feedback and communication, opportunities arise for
reducing consumption, for better exploiting renewable sources,
and for increasing the reliability and performance of the transmission and distribution networks. At the same time, however,
closing loops where they have never been closed before, across
multiple temporal and spatial scales, creates control challenges
as well.
Societal and governmental visions for the smart grid will
require the engagement of the controls community for their realization. Feedback, optimization, estimation, dynamics, stability...
these and other control system concepts are core to smart grid
technology. In many ways, the smart grid is a control problem!
Another major strategic goal is to enable real-time demand
management and responseto make is possible for customers to
modify consumption in reaction to hourly changes in electricity
prices and availability. We see inexpensive but advanced two-way
secure wireless communications as essential: Dynamic modeling
of energy flows, their optimization and control depend on
the availability of trustworthy data streams from sensors and
monitors distributed throughout the electricity delivery system,
for example on power lines and local distribution transformers.

978-1-4673-2729-9/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE

Drawing on those inputs and the even more ubiquitous data

transmitted securely and wirelessly from substations, operations
engineers will be able to spot potential problems and make
adjustments before problems arise.
As these systems are put in place, they will provide the
opportunity to investigate the whole range of issues that arise in
connection with the smart grid, from hybrid vehicle integration
and electricity market design to system automation and security.
If the smart grid is to fulfill its promise, it needs to be not
just more efficient but also more robust that our current power
systems (which are by no means dumb), both self-healing and
highly resistant to attack.
Thus, we have developed and assessed a novel cyber-physical
security attack detection-framework that is distributed, agentbased, automated, self-configuring and self-tuning, scalable, and
lightweight with respect to computational and communications
resources being required. Cyber-agents include traffic analyzers,
content analyzers, physical-system signals analyzers (such as an
agent inspecting voltage, current, rates of change, frequency
signals of power lines), and user-behavior analyzers.
No matter how many layers of security or the degree of
sophistication used in defense mechanisms, it will be essential
that the industry hire qualified people. Research findings suggest
that human and organizational factors do affect computer and
information security performance in a multi-layered fashion.
Often vulnerabilities are not the result of a single mistake or
configuration error, but numerous latent organizational conditions, such as management support and decisions made by
designers that combine to create scenarios where failures and
vulnerabilities may occur. In many complex networks, the human
participants themselves are both the most susceptible to failure
and the most adaptable in the management of recovery.
We also are currently investigating the potential savings for
groups of distribution customers that are served by backup
energy storage systems during a time of outage, using a sophisticated cost model recently developed at Lawrence Berkeley
Laboratory. Enabled by remote load controllers, intelligent load
shedding can be implemented on the legacy distribution systems
or in microgrids to prioritize emergency power service to critical
or high cost-of-outage loads.
Taken as a whole, the University of Minnesota smart grid
program will provide opportunities to develop, test and demonstrate innovative distribution technologies at all scales: smart
room, smart home, and smart microgrids. That is, if successful
in all its dimensions, what we have dubbed our smart grid
sandbox could be the model for regional distribution systems
that are interactive, self-correcting and self-defending. That is,
once the smart grid concept has been stress-assessed from micro
to macro, stakeholders will be able to see the way forward toward
implementing it nationwide.

S. Massoud Amin S. Massoud Amin, chairman of the IEEE smart grid

newsletter and a fellow of ASME, holds the Honeywell/H.W. Sweatt Chair
in Technological Leadership at the University of Minnesota. He directs
the universitys Technological Leadership Institute (TLI), is a University
Distinguished Teaching Professor and professor of electrical and computer
engineering. He received the B.S. degree with honors and the M.S. degree
in electrical and computer engineering from the University of MassachusettsAmherst, and the M.S. degree and the D.Sc. degree in systems science and
mathematics from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Prof. Amin is the author of over 200 peer-reviewed manuscripts and
has received numerous national and international recognition and awards
for leadership and excellence in R&D and education. Before joining the
university in 2003, he held positions of increasing responsibility at the Electric
Power Research Institute (EPRI) in Palo Alto. After tragic events of 9/11, he
directed all EPRIs Infrastructure Security R&D and served as area manager
for Security, Grid Operations/Planning, and Energy Markets. Prior to that, he
served as manager of mathematics and information sciences, where he led
the development of more than 24 technologies that transferred to industry,
and pioneered R&D in self-healing infrastructures and smart grids, and
twice received the Chauncey Award, The Institutes highest honor. For more
information, please see http://umn.edu/amin