| TOPIC |
Roadmap to Secure Power Control Systems against Cyber-Intrusions |
| SPEAKER |
Chee-Wooi Ten, Assistant Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, USA |
| DATE |
23 November 2009 (Monday) |
| TIME |
4.00 pm to 5.30 pm |
| VENUE |
EA-06-02, Engineering block EA, NUS |
|
FEES |
No
Charge |
| ABSTRACT |
|
With today's technological advance in communication devices and sensors, interdependencies between energy and
computer communication infrastructures have evolved into more complex systems that changes the way how it
operates. Integration of these infrastructures has become one of the important components to smart grid vision as it
facilitates better infrastructure management of existing physical infrastructure with renewable resources. The
approach not only does improve system operations, but also it serves as a control backbone at a system-level to
ensure security and integrity. As the revolutionary shift has moved toward an automated paradigm, managing the
power system operations through cyber-infrastructure can undoubtedly improve the efficiency of energy delivery.
However, the drawback of this revolution, by introducing the standardized communication protocols, can also
increase the risks of cyber-threats, i.e., electronic intrusions to local or system level to manipulate the control
variables for a cyber-attack. In order to prevent such catastrophic disruption on power operations, North American
Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) has attempted to establish procedures and policies by mandating the
cybersecurity compliances to utility companies. In recent years, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)
has also been engaging in responding to the challenging issues, such as encryptions on the existing communication
channels and establishing system-wide network anomaly and detection prototypes.
Besides all these policies and cyber-network management improvements, there has been minimal synergic efforts to
collaborate research between multidisciplinary areas that emphasizes the anomaly event extraction and possible
resulting impact of cyber-attacks on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. This talk introduces
4 major components of comprehensive cybersecurity framework that include (i) Real-time monitoring, (ii) Anomaly
detection, (iii) Impact analysis, and (iv) Mitigation strategies (RAIM). The framework addresses systematic
vulnerability evaluation of SCADA systems at three levels: system, scenarios, and access points. The proposed
method is based on cyber systems embedded with the firewall and password models. The impact of a potential
electronic intrusion is evaluated by its potential loss of load in the power system. An extended model to coordinated
attacks has been developed for the control center and substation networks based on the anomaly correlation
methods. The impact studies of the coordinated attacks demonstrate that the feasibility of systematic evaluations
that can be furthered improved. One way to further articulate the practical needs is the software implementation of
future control center framework for the use of on-line decision support aids in operational environment. |
BIOGRAPHY
|
Chee-Wooi Ten was born in Alor Setar, Malaysia. He received the BSEE and MSEE degrees from Iowa State
University, Ames, in 1999 and 2001, respectively. Prior to completing his Master's degree, he had a summer
internship with MidAmerican in Des Moines working as an Energy Management System (EMS) Analyst. He was an
Application Engineer with Siemens Energy Management and Information System (SEMIS) in Singapore from 2002
to 2006. He has recently received the PhD degree from University College Dublin (UCD), National University of
Ireland. His primary research interests are (1) cybersecurity of power system infrastructure and alternative-energy
resource management and (2) software prototype and power automation applications on SCADA systems. He is
currently an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at Michigan
Technological University.
|
REMARKS
|
Light refreshments will be served after the seminar.
|
|
