Towards Cyber Security Risks Assessment in Electric Utility SCADA Systems

Abstract

This paper presents a unified model based assessment framework to quantify threats and vulnerabilities associated with control systems, especially in the SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system. In the past, this system was primarily utilized as an isolated facility on a local basis, and then it started to be integrated with wide-area networks as the communication technology would make rapid progress. The introduction of smart grid, which is an innovative application of digital processing and communications to the power grid, might lead to more and more cyber threats originated from IT systems. However, an up-to-date power system often requires the real-time operations, which clearly implies that the cyber security would turn out to be a complicated but also crucial issue for the power system. In short, the purpose of this paper is to streamline a comprehensive approach to prioritizing cyber security risks which are expressed by the combination of threats, vulnerabilities, and values in the SCADA components.