Berkeley Lab Aims to Strengthen the Cybersecurity of the Grid
As the U.S. electricity grid continues to modernize, it will mean things like better reliability and resilience, lower environmental impacts, greater integration of renewable energy, as well as new computing and communications technologies to monitor and manage the increasing number of devices that connect to the grid. However, that enhanced connectivity for grid operators and consumers also opens the door to potential cyber intrusions.
As part of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) commitment to building cyber-resilient energy delivery systems, a new project led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) will develop tools to detect and counter certain types of cyber attacks on the grid. The project has been awarded up to $2.5 million in funding over three years by DOE, one of 20 projects for cybersecurity on the grid announced recently.
…
The concept is based on watching for irregularities in the physical behavior of the grid. “There are laws that govern the way the power grid operates from a physical perspective,” said Sean Peisert, a cybersecurity expert in Berkeley Lab’s Computational Research Division and the principal investigator on the project. “So we leverage those insights to understand the ways in which hackers might attempt to do something to the grid.”