Towards Secure Demand-Response Systems on the Cloud

Abstract

Demand response (DR) systems are gaining fast adoption and utilities are increasingly relying on them for peak load shaving, demand side management, and maintaining power quality. DR systems are cyber-physical systems (CPS) where the communication component is cyber, whereas the control components have physical effects. As DR systems experience wider adoption and manipulate much larger loads, achieving scalability has become an important concern. On the other hand, demand response events are often sporadic, and maintaining systems and infrastructure that could easily scale up or down is often desirable for utility companies in terms of operational cost, which makes us envision that DR systems would eventually move to the cloud. However, moving to cloud is not an elixir as it brings some concerns of its own. In this paper, we focus on OpenADR 2.0-based systems and discuss security properties and challenges that must be considered when migrating DR systems to the cloud.

Smart Grid Metering Networks: A Survey on Security, Privacy and Open Research Issues

“…Pros: discussed cloud computing for DR program; proposed mapping security objectives (identity management, access control, information protection, critical asset protection). [200] Cons: lack of proof-of-concepts and simulations.…”

“…More importantly, many realtime experiments have been conducted including the complexities of homomorphic operations, and computational timing values in different billing periods. In another research, Mohan-Mashima worked on cloud computing to secure automated demand-response program [200]. Authors mainly focused on OpenADR 2.0-related networks.…”

“…Summary: As the smart meters send sensitive information (i.e., consumption usage data) via the wireless communication technologies, cryptography-based schemes are paramount techniques to achieve privacy for information flow between the homes and utility companies. We reviewed (i) encryption schemes considering symmetric encryption [158] [159], asymmetric encryption [120], [160]- [162], and homomorphic encryption [163]- [166], and (ii) authentication and access control schemes [82], [143], [192]- [200].…”

BRICKS: Building’s reasoning for intelligent control knowledge-based system

“…It enables access through a web browser. Secure communications over public networks must be assured, so, the use of Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) with Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol is suggested (Herberg, Mashima, Jetcheva, & Mirzazad-Barijough, 2014;Mohan & Mashima, 2014). The use of Firewalls, Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) must also be considered.…”

Cloud based Cyber Physical Systems Security Issues: A Survey

“…Mission critical applications often contains cyber physical systems to operate physical processes. Thus, attacks on CPS can cause major harm to DR systems[2].…”