Cyber security in communication of SCADA systems using IEC 61850

Abstract

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system play the most important roles in the remote surveillance system. The development of the communication system of the new substations such as renewable energy sources, smart grid houses, new energy sources in power network, increases the nodes in a data communications network, which increases the number of possibilities to connect to the SCADA system. In designing the new substation, no one takes into account the aspect of cyber security. This is limited only to choose the mode of communication in the station and method of communication to SCADA system. Preparing project major communication are made on IEC 60870-5 [1], DNP3[2], IEC61850 [3] protocol on SS level, connection to SCADA mostly works with IEC 60870-5-104 [4] transmission protocol or DNP3.0 presents network access for IEC 60870-5-101 [5] based on Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), which can be utilized for basic telecontrol tasks in SCADA systems. However, the IEC 60870-5-104 protocol transmits messages in clear text without any authentication mechanism. Furthermore, the IEC 60870-5-104 protocol is based on TCP/IP, which also has cyber-security, issues itself. (IEC/104 is used as the notation, instead of IEC 60870-5-104 in the remainder of the paper.)