I-Corps: Cybersecurity Solution for Collecting, Storing, and Using Substation Relay Settings Data

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to provide a new capability to the U.S. electric utility industry that (1) enhances system reliability and (2) enables linking cyber and physical system analyses in new ways. The power grid's reliable, resilient, and secure operation is a vital national interest - underpinning economic vitality, high living standards, and health/welfare. The power grid, one of the most complex systems ever built, is vulnerable to extreme weather, natural disasters, criminal acts, and hostile attacks. It has some 3,100 providers generating, transmitting, and/or distributing power, who operate more 70,000 high-voltage sub-stations. Each substation has tens of relays that open and close breakers - controlling power flows. System planning staffs require accurate, up-to-date relay settings to populate computer simulations that shape reliable system design and operation. Typically, system protection staffs maintain relay settings databases specific to their needs. System planning staffs often find these databases are ill-suited for their needs - extracting/adapting the needed data subsets for planning simulations is a manual, man-hour intense effort. The system operator is also obligated to protect relay settings data during collection, storage, and use to prevent exploitation by criminals or other hostile actors. This I-Corps project seeks to provide power system operators a new capability to streamline/harmonize their efforts to collect, store, use, and secure relay data for system studies/analysis. This new capability will also enable power providers to link their physical system simulation results and cyber network maps - opening the door to security effort prioritization with new, previously unachievable, synergy. The research objectives are two-fold. First, the project seeks to provide an integrated, end-to-end capability enabling automated relay settings data collection, central storage, and automated, tailored data provision to system analysts. The physical product will be a standalone, purpose-built computer system that incorporates multiple essential functions: database, FTP server, webserver, parser, and application-specific software. Second, it is envisioned to expand the capabilities to leverage recently introduced Software Guard Extension (SGX)-enabled CPUs, which provide encrypted memory space for securely processing sensitive data. The purpose-built computer linking SGX-enabled CPUs will provide a new level of security on networked computer systems simulating power system behaviors. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.