Abstract:
Securing cyberspace is a vital element of critical infrastructure protection efforts currently underway in the United States and other industrialized nations. As pointed out in U.S. Department of Homeland Security Testimony to Congress, interdependency of cyber and physical infrastructure is particularly “acute” in the case of control systems [1]. The automation and communication networks being used today to control electrical power systems are a particular concern, and, until now, methods to explore the effects on the physical power system due to control system compromise have been very limited. “Successful” hackers could gain access to vital control and protection settings and commands and cause significant problems for the operators and the system. In order to understand the consequences of hacker attacks and to find ways to harden the system against such attacks, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) and the Center for Advanced Power Systems (CAPS) at FSU have combined forces to create a “virtual” electrical grid system linked to an actual control, communication and protection system.
J. Tang, R. Hovsapian, M. Sloderbeck, J. Langston, R. Meeker, P. G. Mclaren, D. Becker, B. Richardson, M. Baca, J. Trent, Z. Hartley, R. Parks, S. Smith, Presented at Third International Conference on Critical Infrastructures, Alexandria USA, September 2006
KEYWORDS: SCADA Automation, real time digital simulator, power system security testbed, cyber attacks
