Reliable and secure SCADA framework for residential microgrid communications

Goutham Krishna Chalamasetty, University of Texas at El Paso

Abstract

Cyber security is one of the major needs for electric power industry like many other industries and organizations. The advancements in technology provide numerous benefits to power industry as well as benefits cyber attackers to perform different cyber-attacks on the industry. Power system is a complex physical entity that deals with power generation, distribution, and transmission. In general, no individual or company or an organization can bear a one hour power cut, which shows the need for reliability in electric power industry. In order to develop a reliable and secure Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) communication network, this thesis contributes to propose a SCADA system with Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) for residential microgrid communications. The proposed network’s objective is to collect the data of power consumption from smart meters in houses and Electric Vehicles (EV). The proposed network also helps to connect mobile operators into the system, which are helpful in emergency situations such as power blackouts. In addition, by studying the various possible cyber-attacks on MANET, this thesis contributes to apply two Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDP) technologies: (i) Monitoring, Detection, and Rehabilitation (MDR) approach and (ii) Secure Knowledge algorithm with Anomaly detection (SKA) to the proposed SCADA network for securing the network from various Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. Network Simulator version 2 (NS-2), which is widely known for MANET simulations, is used for testing the effectiveness of both IDP technologies (MDR and SKA). MDR approach is applied when attacker introduce malicious nodes into the proposed SCADA communication network. Test results presented in Chapter 4 show the effectiveness of MDR approach in defending malicious nodes, which lead to DoS attacks. In this thesis, our proposed IDP technology is SKA, which is applied to the SCADA network when it is attacked by DoS attacks such as blackhole attacks and anomaly attacks. Test results presented in Chapter 5 demonstrate the efficiency of the SKA technology in defending DoS attacks.

Subject Area

Communication|Electrical engineering|Energy

Recommended Citation

Chalamasetty, Goutham Krishna, "Reliable and secure SCADA framework for residential microgrid communications" (2016). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI10118204.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI10118204

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