Читать книгу Building an Effective Security Program for Distributed Energy Resources and Systems - Mariana Hentea - Страница 82

Information technologies contribute to raising the interdependency between the operation of the power grid (including generation, transmission, and distribution) and the operation of the wholesale electricity market. The electric market and the power system become more closely tight every day. The operation of one depends on the continuous and reliable operation of the other. In addition, the vulnerability of the power system is not mainly a matter of electric system or physical system, but is more a matter of cybersecurity. Attacks (such as attacks upon the power system, attacks by the power system, and attacks through power system) to the Smart Grid infrastructures could bring huge damages on the economy and public safety.

Control systems such as SCADA are highly interconnected with IT systems within electric industry and with external infrastructures and economic sectors. Historically, control system security meant locating and identifying problems in a closed‐loop system; now unauthorized intrusion or attacks are evolving issues that have to be addressed.

The interdependencies are manifested at different levels. Security dependencies can occur and have all sorts of side effects. Risk assessment and management in large‐scale systems such as smart power grid requires an understanding of how and to what degree the systems are interdependent. Instances of interdependencies with other infrastructures are reported in [Amin 2003].

The smart power grid infrastructure is characterized by interdependencies (physical, cyber, geographical, and logical) and complexity (collections of interacting components). Cyber interdependencies are a result of the pervasive computerization and automation of infrastructures. There is a need for developing tools and techniques that allow a critical infrastructure such as the power grid to self‐heal in response to threats, failures, natural disasters, or other perturbations. Also, other scenarios have to be considered. For example, there is a cascading effect due to interdependencies of electric infrastructure with other infrastructures such as gas, telecommunications, transportation, financial, etc.