Using SDN to Enhance Cyber Resiliency in IEC 61850-based Substation OT Networks

Using traditional networking in Operation Technology (OT) network design for industrial control system such as electric substation automation systems (SAS) has three main challenges - (a) vulnerable to a wide range of cyber spoofing attacks, (b) delays incurred during alternate path search in the event of a network failure impact the stringent IEC 61850 latency standards, and (c) network links in the same broadcast domain consume more bandwidth. The OT network architecture for IEC 61850-based SAS applications is investigated in this study using software-defined networking (SDN), which employs flow-based match-action rules, deny-by-default security, optimal bandwidth utilization, and fast failover capability to meet the aforementioned challenges. With industry-grade hardware and software, a real-time IEC 61850-based hardware-in-the-loop testbed is developed in this study, and several experiments are run to demonstrate how SDN offers greater cyber resiliency than traditional networking. Our use case scenarios show how SDN may improve cyber resilience by preventing cyberattacks, effectively using network bandwidth, and facilitating seamless traffic exchange in the event of network failures. Our findings demonstrate that SDN is a viable alternative approach to current traditional networking issues for critical grid applications.