Cyber Security Practical considerations for implementing IEC 62351 Frank Hohlbaum, Markus Braendle, Fernando Alvarez ABB
[email protected] Switzerland 1. Introduction Two trends are currently changing substation automation systems: IEC 61850 and the need for increased cyber security. IEC 61850 has gained global acceptance by both vendors as well as customers. Cyber security on the other hand has quickly become one of the most dominant topics for control systems in general and electrical utilities in particular. The combination of the two, securing IEC 61850 based communications, has been one of the goals of the recently published technical specification IEC 62351. In the authors‟ view IEC 62351 is overall a good starting point and will be the future standard to help secure IEC 61850 communication. However, there are some shortcomings of the current standard and some challenges that need to be addressed before IEC 62351 can be implemented and gain wide acceptance. This paper will highlight the challenge of addressing secure communication in the substation real-time environment, complying with the IEC 61850 real-time specifications. The major difficulties are to reach the performance defined in IEC 61850 for GOOSE and SV data with today‟s proposed technical specification defined for IEC 62351 part 6. In chapter 2, we will give a short overview about the structure of IEC 61850 as well as the detailed performance requirements for the various data types. Chapter 3 will present an introduction of the IEC 62351 standard including the used methods to secure the IEC 61850 communication. Chapter 4 will then show the major implementation issues of IEC 62351 part 6.