Grant: Industrial Research Chairs

The current electric grid is considered as one of the best engineering achievements of the twentieth century. It*was designed to deliver power to various consumer domains. To a large extent, it has been successful in*fulfilling this objective. Nevertheless, the electric grid has experienced several blackouts over the past years. In*particular, there have been five major blackouts over the past forty years, three of which have occurred in the*past nine years alone. The aspiration to secure power, to achieve energy efficiency and to contribute to*environment protection through the increasing utilization of renewable energies are driving the need to deploy*smart grids. It is predicated that these smart grids will allow for bidirectional power flow as well as new ways*to manage both power generation and the increasing energy demand. The successful deployment of smart grids*is predicated on the ability to guarantee their security. Such a requirement is of paramount importance since*electrical grids are essential to several components of the critical infrastructure. Recent cyber security incidents*and security research studies demonstrate that electrical grids could be subjected to disrupting attacks that*might lead to severe security and economic consequences, and even to the endangerment and loss of human*lives. Furthermore, the increasing integration of ICT technologies will definitely augment cyber attack*surfaces. The exploitation of these vulnerabilities might lead to attacks that will, for instance, skew the state*information, alter the abilities to locate events or faults on transmission lines, place the grid at operating points*that are at greater risk from contingencies. This will lead to undesirable and severe consequences such as*financial losses, systemic losses from cascading failures, major blackouts, etc. The primary intent of this*research is to explore the security of smart grid domains, components, devices and protocols to: (1) elicit the*security requirements; (2) identify the attack surfaces together with the underlying vulnerabilities, threats and*their cyber physical consequences; (3) propose practical and efficient detection, prevention, mitigation and*recovery techniques and methodologies that will definitely harden and enhance the overall smart grid security.