Application of Cyber Security Techniques in the Protection of Efficient Cyber-Physical Energy Generation Systems

 This project is called, “Application of Cyber Security Techniques in the Protection of Efficient Cyber-Physical Energy Generation Systems.” In this project, we designed and developed a security monitoring and analysis framework for control systems and smart grid technologies. This system is designed to enhance resiliency of the system by integrating traditional computer security and safety engineering techniques. The goal is to integrate the monitoring and analysis of IP network traffic, as well as serial communications and physical constraints within a single intrusion detection system (IDS) framework and provide capabilities for determining the physical safety of system operations by simultaneously examining behavior at multiple hierarchical layers and contexts.

This project was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Cybersecurity for Energy Delivery Systems (CEDS) program.

Principal Investigators:

Sean Peisert (PI; LBNL)
Chuck McParland (PI; LBNL)
Anna Scaglione (Lead at UC Davis)

Postdocs

Masood Parvania (Postdoc; UC Davis → faculty at U of Utah)
Zhifang Wang (UC Davis → faculty at VCU)

Students

Mahnoosh Alizadeh (UC Davis → Stanford)
Jonathan Ganz (UC Davis)
Reinhard Gentz (UC Davis)
Mahdi Jamei (UC Davis)
Georgia (Gina) Koutsandria (UC Davis → Univ. of Rome, “La Sapienza”)
Xiao (Simon) Li (UC Davis → UC Berkeley)
Vishak Muthukumar (UC Davis)
Steven Templeton (UC Davis)
Teng Wang (UC Davis)

Partners:

Corelight (née Broala)
OSIsoft (John Matranga)

More information on the Energy Sector Control Systems Working Group (ESCSWG) page

LBNL Physics-Based IDS Source Code at GitHub

Publications resulting from this project:

Georgia Koutsandria, Reinhard Gentz, Mahdi Jamei, Anna Scaglione, Sean Peisert, and Chuck McParland, “A Real-Time Testbed Environment for Cyber-Physical Security on the Power Grid,” Proceedings of the First ACM Workshop on Cyber-Physical Systems Security & Privacy (CPS-SPC), Denver, CO, October 16, 2015. [BibTeX] [DOI]

Chuck McParland, Sean Peisert, and Anna Scaglione, “Monitoring Security of Networked Control Systems: It’s the Physics,” IEEE Security and Privacy,12(6), November/December 2014. [BibTeX] [DOI]

Georgia Koutsandria, Vishak Muthukumar, Masood Parvania, Sean Peisert, Chuck McParland, and Anna Scaglione, “A Hybrid Network IDS for Protective Digital Relays in the Power Transmission Grid,” Proceedings of the 5th IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Communications (SmartGridComm), Venice, Italy, November 3–6, 2014. [BibTeX] [DOI]

Georgia Koutsandria, Cyber Physical Security for Power Grid Protection, M.S. Thesis, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Davis, Sept. 2014. [BibTeX]

Masood Parvania, Georgia Koutsandria, Vishak Muthukumar, Sean Peisert, Chuck McParland, and Anna Scaglione, “Hybrid Control Network Intrusion Detection Systems for Automated Power Distribution Systems,” Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Trustworthiness of Smart Grids (ToSG), Atlanta, GA, June 23, 2014. [BibTeX] [DOI]

Xiao Li, Zhifang Wang, Vishak Muthukumar, Anna Scaglione, Sean Peisert, and Chuck McParland, “Networked Loads in the Distribution Grid,” Proceedings of the 2012 Asia-Pacific Signal & Information Processing Association (APSIPA) Annual Summit and Conference, Hollywood, CA, December 3–6, 2012. [BibTeX] [DOI]

More information is available on other Berkeley Lab R&D projects focusing on cybersecurity in general, as well as specifically on cybersecurity for energy delivery systems.