A Security Assessment Model for Electrical Power Grid SCADA System

Abstract

Due to the wide application of SCADA systems in national critical infrastructure, their cyber security issues and vulnerabilities have been a primary concern; whereas, the impact and consequences of cyber-attacks to these systems have the potential to result in catastrophic consequences in the physical domain. Therefore, estimating possible attack impacts and identifying system vulnerabilities are major concern in SCADA management and operations. However, it is quite difficult to plan, execute and review vulnerability analysis in critical infrastructure systems as well as in industrial control systems (such as SCADA system) due to its complexity, large-scale and heterogeneity. Consequently, a consistent domain-specific conceptual model is required to establish a generic framework for cyber security analysis to examine and investigate security threats on cyber-physical systems, the role of the entities within the system as well as system operations. The main contribution of this work is to present a multi-facets model to support cyber security analysis practices such as penetration testing, vulnerability assessment and risk analysis. The proposed model presents a common insight among different SCADA configurations, implementations and the employed protocols to handle its complexity, heterogeneous and scale. To demonstrate the usability as a proof of concept and applicability of the proposed model, the paper also presents an example illustrating how the proposed model can be employed to carry out security vulnerability assessment.