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Title: SHARP-Net: Platform for Self-Healing and Attack Resilient PMU Networks

Conference ·

Synchrophasor technology plays a pivotal role in developing the next generation of wide-area monitoring, protection, and control in the smart grid environment. As technology and communications infrastructures evolve, however, so do the attack surfaces in the synchrophasor network that can be exploited by advanced persistent threat (APT) actors to affect power system stability and reliability. In this paper, we propose a novel platform for developing a self-healing and attack-resilient PMU network (SHARP-Net) by instituting a state-of-the-art intrusion detection system (IDS) with an intrusion mitigation system (IMS) and an alert management system (AMS). In particular, the proposed platform detects anomalies during cyberattacks on phasor data concentrators (PDCs) based on the rules defined in the IDS, then the generated alerts are published to the IMS through the AMS. The proposed IMS proceeds to take automated corrective responses to mitigate cyberattacks by reconfiguring the synchrophasor network to isolate the compromised PDCs, and it orchestrates new PDCs to prevent the future propagation of attacks. Further, the IMS restores the system's observability by reconnecting the new PDCs to make the grid attack-resilient. In this work, the SHARP-Net platform is developed by using Python-based libraries, minimega's software-defined network, and virtual machine orchestration. We implement and validate the proposed SHARP-Net architecture by testing a PMU network in the smart grid environment. SHARP-Net showed promising performance in detecting cyberattacks and mitigating them through the network reconfiguration.

Research Organization:
National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Facilities and Infrastructure (EE-5F)
DOE Contract Number:
AC36-08GO28308
OSTI ID:
1669497
Report Number(s):
NREL/CP-5R00-74646; MainId:6145; UUID:39e667d1-9ac3-e911-9c26-ac162d87dfe5; MainAdminID:14073
Resource Relation:
Conference: Presented at the 2020 IEEE Power & Energy Society Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference (ISGT), 17-20 February 2020, Washington, D.C.
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English