An Analysis Upon Various Securities of Electrical Power Systems |

ABSTRACT:

Security of supply has been always a key factor in thedevelopment of the electric industry. Adequacy, quality of supply, stability,reliability and voltage collapse along with costs have been always carefullyconsidered when planning the future of the electric power system. Since 1982,when world’s deregulation process started, the introduction of competition atgeneration level brought new challenges, while the proper operation of theelectric power system still require physical coordination between noncooperative agents. The increasing development of SCADA/EMS systems, thegrowing number of market participants, and the development of more complexmarket schemes have been more and more relying on Information Technologies,making the physical system more vulnerable to cyber security risks. Now cybersecurity risks look bigger than the physical ones. We developed a review ofsome of the vulnerability risks that actual electric power systems face,showing some implementation issues of it. We also comment some the steps thatNERC is leading to ensure a secure energy sourcing to the U.S. Economy. Disruption of electric power operations can becatastrophic on the national security and economy. Due to the complexity ofwidely dispersed assets and the interdependency between computer,communication, and power systems, the requirement to meet security and qualitycompliance on the operations is a challenging issue. In recent years, NERC’scybersecurity standard was initiated to require utilities compliance oncybersecurity in control systems - NERC CIP 1200. This standard identifiesseveral cyber-related vulnerabilities that exist in control systems andrecommends several remedial actions (e.g., best practices). This paper is anoverview of the cybersecurity issues for electric power control and automationsystems, the control architectures, and the possible methodologies forvulnerability assessment of existing systems.