Securing Telecontrol in Smart Grid Environments

The Smart Grid is based on information exchange between various stakeholders using open communication technologies to control the physical electric grid through the information grid. Protection against cyber attacks is essential to ensure a reliable operation of the smart grid. While this topic has been addressed by various regulatory, standardization, and research activities, the devil is in the detail, namely in the integration of suitable security solutions into the target systems and in the specific deployment environments considering the already deployed infrastructure. After giving an overview on the target use case and its security requirements, the focus is placed on securing telecontrol communication, namely IEC 60870-5-104 by applying the IEC 62351 framework for end-to-end security in power systems. The security framework is depicted regarding its current status putting the emphasis on the security means for telecontrol.