Distributed specification-based firewalls for power grid substations

Abstract

Cybersecurity issues have raised concerns as potential loopholes exist in the Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system when the system architecture moved from a proprietary to an open system. As a result of the interdependency between the power grids and SCADA communication networks, it is important to further strengthen the defense of cyber networks against malicious intrusions. The focus of this research is to model and evaluate a novel cybersecurity protection scheme using network firewall technology operated at the application layer to enhance the information protection in SCADA networks. A quantitative analysis is performed based on the attack and defense simulations on the SCADA cybersecurity testbed available at UCD. The preliminary test results elucidate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed scheme for enhancing information security of the substations.