Hub Sessions

Germany made a leap forward in the security certification domain considering that other European nations currently set their policies for the implementation of the NIS Directive. This presentation points out that the step into the unknown has served as an awareness raising campaign in Germany. Policy makers from other European countries can now profit from the lessons-learned.

How to facilitate and secure the access to Smart metering services toward reducing the energy demand

Security is the key issue for utilities as the reality of successful cyber-attacks and the threat of further attacks grows.  Techniques such as block-chain can be employed as countermeasures to migitate the threats and 5G offers feature to increase the resilience and survivability of the power networks if a cyber-attack has been successful.  This presentation will describe the challenges and the solutions offered by 5G, based on the work of two Ericsson led European Commission funded research and innovation projects.

The modernization and connected nature of utilities demands a secure foundation.  Cybersecurity is an essential enabler to ensuring a safe and reliable flow of electricity.  Fortunately, despite escalating cyber-attacks targeting utilities, with the right approach and the application of cutting edge technologies such a machine learning and artificial intelligence, utilities can build a secure and resilient operational infrastructure.

Many challenges in the Smart Grid world are challenges that companies in the Digital Television world have faced in the past 30 years. Security companies in the DTV landscape have learned on the job to fight against organized crime. They have learned how to maintain complex systems with different network topologies and many different types of devices, and how to securely manage those devices. Our Smart Grid does not have 30 years of time to learn on the job. We need to learn from mistakes and experiences made. In this presentation, we give an overview of the main challenges and how these can be addressed this though key management design and device lifecycle security, and we link them to current issues in Smart Grid security.

The protection of a power system has different priorities compared to traditional IT environments. In IT, the highest priority is always on confidentiality. In operational technologies, availability is more relevant. A system must be available and system operation must be able to protect systems and humans from harm at any cost. With the merging of operational technology and information technology, power systems are facing increased risks from known and new threats. 

This presentation will describe why Cyber Security is becoming more relevant in today’s utility environment.  It will then go into details about what can be done to help secure a utility’s key infrastructure using standards based approaches for assessing security risk and then using patch management to maintain a good cyber security baseline.