Cyber Risks to Critical Smart Grid Assets of Industrial Control Systems

Chenyang Liu, Yazeed Alrowaili, Neetesh Saxena and Charalambos Konstantinou
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Chenyang Liu: School of Computer Science and Informatics, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3AT, UK
Yazeed Alrowaili: School of Computer Science and Informatics, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3AT, UK
Neetesh Saxena: School of Computer Science and Informatics, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3AT, UK
Charalambos Konstantinou: CEMSE Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955, Saudi Arabia

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 17, 1-19

Abstract: Cybersecurity threats targeting industrial control systems (ICS) have significantly increased in the past years. Moreover, the need for users/operators to understand the consequences of attacks targeting these systems and protect all assets is vital. This work explores asset discovery in ICS and how to rank these assets based on their criticality. This paper also discusses asset discovery and its components. We further present existing solutions and tools for asset discovery. We implement a method to identify critical assets based on their connection and discuss related results and evaluation. The evaluation utilises four attack scenarios to stress the importance of protecting these critical assets since the failure to protect them can lead to serious consequences. Using a 12-bus system case, our results show that targeting such a system can increase and overload transmission lines values to 120% and 181% MVA, which can affect the power supply and disrupt service, and it can increase the cost up to 60%, affecting the productivity of this electric grid.

Keywords: smart grid; security; critical assets; cyber risks; industrial control systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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