Situational Awareness Network for the electric power system: The architecture and testing metrics

The contemporary electric power system is highly dependent on Information and Communication Technologies which results in its exposure to new types of threats, such as Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) or Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. The most exposed components are Industrial Control Systems in substations and Distributed Control Systems in power plants. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure the cyber security of this critical infrastructure and develop new cyber security technologies able to protect from advanced cyber threats. In this paper a pioneering Situation Awareness Network for the electric power system is presented together with a set of metrics for its testing.