IEC 62351-4 Security Implementations for IEC 61850 MMS Messages

With the deployment of advanced information and communication technologies (ICT) the legacy power grid is being transformed as smart grid. However, the extensive use of ICT makes it vulnerable to cyberattacks. Standardization of power system communication with interoperable protocols has many benefits and at the same time the standardized semantics makes it much more vulnerable to cyberattacks. IEC has published a new standard IEC 62351 which provides the security guidelines for securing power system communication against cyber-attacks. In this paper, the cybersecurity considerations for IEC 61850 Manufacturing Message Specification (MMS) messages as per the IEC 62351-4 standard are discussed in detail. Further, the implementation of IEC 62351-4 security specifications for MMS messages are demonstrated through experiments in lab.