SECURING SMART GRID: CYBER SECURITY REQUIREMENTS AND CURRENT SECURITY SOLUTIONS Halim Halimi Department of IT, State University of Tetovo Tetovo, Rep. of Macedonia hhalimi2000@yahoo.com Aristotel Tentov Computer Science and Engineering Department Faculty of Electr. Engineering and Inform. Technologies Skopje, Rep. of Macedonia toto@feit.ukim.edu. mk Abstract-- A smart grid is a new self-healing, self-activating form of electricity network, which integrates power-flow control, increased quality of electricity, and energy reliability, energy efficiency and energy security using information and communication technologies. Its two-way communication and electricity flow enable to monitor, predict and manage the energy usage. To upgrade an existing power grid into a smart grid, it requires an intelligent and secure communication infrastructure. A security architecture for distributed communications, pervasive computing, and sensing security technologies will be used as a security solution. In this article, we describe the smart grid goals and tactics solution, and present a three-layer network communication architecture for smart grid. Next, we discus about security requirement in smart grid. We then introduce the current security solution, whose integration is essential for achieving protection against existing and future sophisticated attacks. Index Terms--Current security solution, Network communication architecture, Security requirement. I. INTRODUCTION The increasing load and consumption demands in electric power system increase electricity complication such as voltage variation and overloads and blackouts. Such modernizing of Power Grid is necessary in order to support reliability scalability, manageability and extensibility. Also this system should by secure, cost-effective and interoperable. Such an electric infrastructure is called a “smart grid”. The smart grid is a power delivery infrastructure that is integrated with two-way communication and electricity flow. Through advanced sensing communication technologies it can monitor and analyze generation in near-real-time [1], delivery and power usage. According to the collected information from monitoring and analysis predictive information and recommendations to all stakeholders can be provided (e. g., consumers, suppliers and utilities). By having communication and control layer, smart grid will enable local data processing, two way electricity transmission, decentralized control, and reliability-efficiency response. The main goal of smart grid as summarized in Table 1, is to provide reliability (e.g., self healing, self activating, automated management and real time diagnosis), efficiency (e.g., accommodation of future alternative, management with charging of electric vehicle, cost effective power generation, transmission and distribution), and security (physical and cyber security) [2]. Table 1 Smart grid goals Main goal of smart grid Reliability Self healing, self activating, automated management and real-time diagnosis. Efficiency Accommodation of future alternative, management with charging of electric vehicle, cost effective power generation, transmission and distribution Security Improved monitoring, improved reliability, access control, authentication, privacy reservation, intrusion detection Such this system is not a simple grid. It can be regarded as a “system of systems”, that involves both information technology (IT) and electricity systems. This complex system presents many challenges in cyber security and privacy aspect [3]. The grid can by physically attacked by human or by malicious software that can harm the control system. All of these forms can be highly dangerous where billing information of particular user can cause a major economical problem, if they are not monitored carefully. So for securing against these threats, virtual private networks (VPNs), public key infrastructure (PKI) authorization and authentication, intrusion detection systems (IDSs), firewalls, antivirus software, etc. are used as a security solution. The paper is organized as follows: in Section II, a security communication architecture is presented. Section III discusses the cyber security requirements for smart grid systems. The current security solutions are presented in section IV and finally we conclude this article in section V. II. SMART GRID NETWORK ARCHITECTURE Smart grid network architecture is the necessary communication platform for monitoring and controlling the grid processes. By generalizing previous proposals in work [4], [5] we present an integrated cyber security network architecture with three layers, i.e. Home Area Networks (HAN), Neighborhood Area Networks (NAN) and Wide Area Networks (WAN) as illustrated in Figure 1.