Cyber security of smart grid and SCADA systems, threats and risks

Nowadays electricity is one of the most significant requirements and base of life facilities. Any interruption in supplying and providing power, like widespread blackouts will cause irreparable effects on different aspects of a society. Technology increasing progress provides remote control and monitoring of power grid through the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system and substation automation which decreases the costs of power transition and control, increases the efficiency and motivates to smart grid. These kinds of technologies create new opportunities to remote monitoring and control of the power substations and equipment for the regional electricity companies. Some of these achievements have been used before but modern systems provide more facilities in operation and maintenance of power system. It is noticeable that this opportunity may convert to threat if cyber security encounters with lack of attention in the smart grid. Therefore, providing sensitive and secure equipment is one of most significant and vital problems to increase the cyber safety and decrease cyber-attack risk in the smart grid. Therefore the facilities equipment, their risks and vulnerabilities should be detected and appropriate methods should be propounded to encounter with these problems. In this paper, substructures of smart grids are firstly discussed. After this introduction, threats, risks and security requirements will be considered in the smart grid. In the following, different types of cyber-attacks and the best architectural and security strategies will be offered.