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Cybersecurity in a Distributed Energy Future

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Cybersecurity in a Distributed Energy Future CYBERSECURITY IN A DISTRIBUTED ENERGY FUTURE Addressing the Challenges and Protecting the Grid from a Cyberattack By Advanced Energy Economy Institute January 18, 2018 San Francisco | Washington D.C. | Boston aee.net | powersuite.aee.net | @aeenet ABOUT ADVANCED ENERGY ECONOMY INSTITUTE The Advanced Energy Economy Institute (AEE Institute) is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization whose mission is to raise awareness of the public benefits and opportunities of advanced energy. AEE Institute provides critical data to drive the policy discussion on key issues through commissioned research and reports, data aggregation and analytic tools. AEE Institute also provides a forum where leaders can address energy challenges and opportunities facing the United States. AEE Institute is affiliated with Advanced Energy Economy (AEE), a 501(c)(6) business association, whose purpose is to advance and promote the common business interests of its members and the advanced energy industry as a whole. Visit www.aee.net/aeei for more information. ABOUT THE 21ST CENTURY ELECTRICITY SYSTEM (21CES) INITIATIVE Through its 21CES initiative, Advanced Energy Economy is helping to accelerate the transition to a high-performing, customer-focused electricity system that is secure, clean, and affordable. The three primary activities of the initiative are: Convening forums that bring together utility executives, policymakers, and advanced energy companies to develop a vision for reform that is responsive to the needs of each state and drives towards concrete action. Participating in key regulatory proceedings in targeted states to provide leadership and input to policymakers and regulators on electric utility industry changes required to support a viable utility business model that allows a high degree of distributed energy resources and empowers customers to become more engaged in their energy use to the benefit of the whole grid. Facilitating detailed discussions and collaboration among diverse stakeholders who are interested in working together to accelerate reforms that lead to win-win outcomes. Page | i Background The energy sector is entering a period of significant change, driven by new technologies, evolving customer needs, environmental imperatives, regulatory drivers, and an increasingly complex set of requirements. Amongst a range of stakeholders, there is mutual interest in moving the industry towards a secure, clean, affordable, and prosperous future. The industry has a unique opportunity to modernize infrastructure and facilitate industry evolution and the deployment of advanced technology solutions, creating economic opportunity and an improved customer experience. The grid of the future will have many more interconnected distributed energy resources and devices. Connecting these systems that are out of the control of the Utility with distributed energy resource technologies in a secure manner is pivotal to the transition process. This paper arises out of an informal Working Group, convened by AEE Institute, that met over a several-month period to address cybersecurity concerns in the electric power sector as a starting point for further discussion with stakeholders, including regulators, policymakers, utilities, advanced energy companies, and others. The views and opinions expressed in this white paper are those of the AEE Institute and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or positions of the Contributors or their organizations. Contributors Lisa Frantzis, Coley Girouard, Ryan Katofsky, and Benjamin Stafford, Advanced Energy Economy Chris Bleuher, Jay Taylor, Joao Souza, and William Romero, Schneider-Electric Chris King, Siemens Jeff Smith, Direct Energy (Centrica) John Berdner, Enphase Energy Ken Lotterhos and Doug Morrill, Navigant Consulting Richard Jones, BRIDGE Energy Group Michael Demeter, Michael Vecchi, Todd Wiedman, Wim Ton, and Steven Chasko, Landis+Gyr Wilson Rickerson and Michael Wu, Converge Strategies, LLC Richard W. Caperton, Oracle Utilities Varun Mehra, EnergyHub Jeff Moe, Ingersoll Rand Page | ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Summary ................................................................................................................................. 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 2 Addressing the Cybersecurity Challenge ............................................................................ 3 National-level Rules and Standards ................................................................................................ 3 Boards, Institutes, and Councils ...................................................................................................... 5 State-level Rules and Standards ..................................................................................................... 5 Protecting Advanced Grids from Cyberattack .................................................................... 7 Best Practices and Strategies ......................................................................................................... 7 Considerations for Grid Operators .................................................................................................. 8 Summary of Recommendations .................................................................................................... 10 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 11 End Notes .............................................................................................................................. 12 Page | iii SUMMARY Cybersecurity is a growing issue for the global prevent or limit widespread electric grid economy. As new technologies and outages by enhancing power quality and communications become widespread, allowing problematic components to be cybersecurity1 is an issue for the critical isolated.5 infrastructure that keeps our energy system going – not just the electricity grid, but the At the same time, the modern grid will open highly interconnected and interdependent new modes of communication and interaction natural gas, water, communications, and fuel between increasingly diverse and numerous distribution systems. participants and devices. For this reason, modern grid technologies expose existing This paper focuses specifically on the highly security vulnerabilities in new ways, as well as dynamic electricity sector and on the introduce new benefits. That said, protections opportunities and challenges created by the that are practical and currently available or widespread introduction of advanced and under development will be able to make an intelligent energy technologies. increasingly complex, interactive, and distributed electricity system more resilient The global market for advanced energy was against cyberattacks. estimated to be $1.4 trillion in 2016. The U.S. was at the forefront of the market as a result of This whitepaper is intended to inform its support for grid modernization and decision-makers about cybersecurity for advanced energy innovation. The U.S. advanced energy technologies by advanced energy market was $200 billion in highlighting: 2016, of which advanced electricity generation, electricity delivery and Cybersecurity threats to the economy and management, and building efficiency to the energy sector; Emerging cybersecurity best practices for a accounted for 70%.2 distributed, intelligent grid; It is projected that the transition to advanced Policy and regulatory frameworks on and intelligent energy technologies will create cybersecurity that are in place at the global a wide range of security3 and economic level, national level and in some states; benefits for the energy system and for and, consumers.4 The National Academies, for Specific protective measures and protocols example, recently found that advanced that can make a power grid characterized controls and a more distributed energy by abundant advanced energy generation architecture have the potential to technologies secure against cyberattack. Page | 1 INTRODUCTION command and control server to send out Cyberattack is a growing instructions to flood the target with threat to the economy and malformed packets. The attack on the the grid internet service provider Dyn caused widespread disruption for many of the most Cybersecurity threats to the grid have popular sites in the U.S. Flooding the target increased in the United States and around the with large numbers of malformed packets world; not only are the threats becoming more that were generated by thousands of common, a few have demonstrated that they compromised IoT devices resulted in one of can be successful. The landscape of potential the biggest distributed denial of service attackers is broad, ranging from individuals to (DDos) attacks in history.8 BrickerBot malware nation-state and terrorist actors. Cybercrimes used the same method of locating unsecured involving fraud and theft for monetary gain IoT devices on the internet. Instead of taking continue to be a prevalent and persistent drag control of those devices to launch wider DDoS on national economies.6 There is also an attacks, the BrickerBot malware installed a increasing number of attacks designed to package which caused the device to become disrupt or destroy physical assets. permanently disabled (or “bricked”). The author of this malware claims to have disabled The energy industry is learning important
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