System-wide Traceability of Commands and Data Exchange in Smart Grids

Smart Grids consist of a large number of interconnected systems and entities. The term traceability means the ability that every command and all data packets, which are exchanged within the system, can be reconstructed at a later time. This includes communication paths, involved entities, content of commands and information about command processing and consequences. This paper discusses challenges that stem from the distributed nature of Smart Grids and the involved heterogeneous communication protocols as well as security mechanisms. Finally, this paper discusses an novel approach that consists of an enhanced logging architecture that aims to provide the possibility for seamless traceability of exchanged data and commands. The proposed approach uses hash-based audit ID calculation that provides system-wide traceability in heterogeneous environments with protocols such as IEC 61850 or the IEC 61780 series that do not natively support exchange of audit indices.