U.S. lab will test software that could bolster cybersecurity on the grid

There's long been speculation that terrorists might try to attack North America's electricity grids and that some elements of such attacks could involve hacking into utilities' Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems or other core IT or operational infrastructure. Testing of new software at a federal government lab in Idaho this year could result in a leap in cybersecurity for the utility industry.

Separately, the North American Electric Reliability Council this month plans to publish a cybersecurity standard to cover thousands of unprotected electrical substations.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory has as one of its missions testing systems that will help electric utilities and system operators across the country protect their infrastructure, operations, and applications from real-world and cyberenemies and hackers.

An early participant in these tests is ABB Ltd., a leading control-systems and emergency- management system vendor for the utility industry whose software monitors and controls the flow of power transmissions and provides operators with a view of traffic. The vendor recently paid TecSys Development Inc., which makes the ConsoleWorks Intelligent Event Manager central-monitoring product, to include ABB's new emergency- management software, Network Manager, in TecSys' roster of supported products.

ConsoleWorks gives customers a single view of systems, along with alarms and suggested processes to avert downtime and potential security problems. It supports many IT systems, but this is the first time it has supported an emergency-management system for the utility industry.

Utility operators who use Network Manager and run ConsoleWorks could attain a single view of both IT and operational systems, enhancing their ability to monitor potential cyberintrusions across multiple points. Following the deal between ABB and TecSys, the Idaho lab has begun conducting some early tests of ConsoleWorks.

If the testing goes successfully, the bundled offering has important implications for the in- dustry, says Jim Davidson, consulting technical specialist at the Idaho lab. "From a central source, we could monitor the beginning of an attack at the router or firewall level," he says.

One ConsoleWorks customer says the software has already helped make his job easier. "It lets us find the root cause for an IT system outage and resolve it quickly," says Eric Whitley, control systems services manager at California Independent System Operator. He expects even more benefits with the addition of support for ABB's emergency-management software.

"Once it's hardened for security, with its central view, I wouldn't have to harden every single app we touch," he says.

Utility operators across the nation in January will get some other help when it comes to securing their systems. The North American Electric Reliability Council expects to publish a new standard for substation cybersecurity that will identify requirements such as installing antivirus software.

Lou Leffler, manager of critical infrastructure protection at the council, says substations represent a major problem to locking down cybersecurity for utilities. Substations have hundreds of times the connections that most antivirus software is accustomed to dealing with, and they can't tolerate a millisecond interruption.

"Many of them were built for a specific task, during an age (where) we didn't have cybersecurity concerns," he says. "Adding on security systems is quite the challenge, due to bandwidth and timing."