Cyber-Security Gaps in a Digital Substation: From Sensors to SCADA

Development of digital substations provides power industrial operation, real-time functionalities and information access. A main challenge in DS is to ensure security, availability, and reliability of power systems as in conventional systems in addition to interoperability capability for different vendors. DS development is rather new in Norway and in an R&D Digital Substation pilot project ECODIS ¹¹Engineering and Condition monitoring in Digital Substation (ECODIS) is a project funded by Research Council of Norway (NFR), Innovation Project for the Industrial Sector - ENERGIX program, project number 296550, coordinated by Statnett R&D group., Statnett ²²Statnett is the system operator of the Norwegian power system. is investigating new functionality advantages and associated costs with IEC 61850 process bus technology. This paper examines cyber-security gaps and vulnerabilities introduced through digitalization of substations.