Quantification of dependencies between electrical and information infrastructures

Abstract

Electrical power system ICT threatsCritical infrastructure dependencies A B S T R A C TIn this paper we present an approach to model and quantify (inter)dependencies between the Electrical Infrastructure (EI) and the Information Infrastructure (II) that implements the EI control and monitoring system. The quantification is achieved through the integration of two models: one that concentrates more on the structure of the power grid and its physical quantities and one that concentrates on the behavior of the control system supported by the II. The modeling approach is exemplified on a scenario whose goal is to study the effects of an II partial failure (a denial of service attack that compromises the communication network) on the remote control of the EI. The approach has been initially developed as part of the European project CRUTIAL.

Model-Based Evaluation of the Impact of Attacks to the Telecommunication Service of the Electrical Grid

“…Considering the effect of attacks to the ICT on failure propagation in the EPS, the scenario is complementary with respect to the IRRIIS ones. The work in this chapter extends the studies in (Beccuti, Chiaradonna, Di Giandomenico, Franceschinis, Donatelli & Dondossola, 2012) in two directions: i) by proposing novel models for the attacks affecting the control infrastructure, and ii) by embedding in the developed models more faithful parameters characterizing the attacks behaviour, as determined by experimental studies documented in Chapter "Cyber Risks in Energy Grid ICT Infrastructures" of this book.…”

“…A model-based approach is chosen, due to its high flexibility in exploring a wide range of alternatives at a limited cost and in representing at different abstraction levels the various layers of the EPS hierarchy (e.g. transmission versus distribution, local versus regional and multiregional as proposed for example in (Beccuti, Chiaradonna, Di Giandomenico, Donatelli, Dondossola & Franceschinis, 2012), (Chiaradonna, Lollini & Di Giandomenico, 2007) and (Chiaradonna, Giandomenico & Nostro, 2011).…”

“…In (Beccuti, Franceschinis, Donatelli, Chiaradonna, Di Giandomenico, Lollini et al, 2009) and (Beccuti, Chiaradonna, Di Giandomenico, Donatelli, Dondossola & Franceschinis, 2012) the effect of a Denial of Service (DoS) attack during the execution of an emergency procedure recovering from a power grid failure scenario has been evaluated using stochastic models: the approach is similar to (Bloomfield, Buzna, Popov, Salako & Wright, 2009), but it is specifically tailored to EPS and allows to deal with a more detailed representation of the major components and dynamics of the power grid and related ICT controls. Considering the effect of attacks to the ICT on failure propagation in the EPS, the scenario is complementary with respect to the IRRIIS ones.…”

Development of the approach for designing, modelling and research of critical IT infrastructure

“…For example, [11][12][13] presents methods based on Petri nets, stochastic activity networks and Bayesian networks.…”

Test System for Mapping Interdependencies of Critical Infrastructures for Intelligent Management in Smart Cities

“…Network-based approaches generally assume that each CIS consists of a set of components (usually represented as nodes) forming a network, and any existing interdependency is represented as a type of relationship between nodes belonging to different networks [11,12]. There are also several other approaches: a few are based on various probabilistic methodologies (e.g., petri nets, stochastic activity networks and Bayesian networks) [13][14][15], some others are considering multi-layer modeling approaches, where infrastructures are seen at different layers and interactions between them are considered at different levels of granularity [16], and also some empirical approaches that analyze CI interdependencies according to historical accident or disaster data and expert experience [17].…”