NSF Project Award CNS #1446831
Project Title: CPS: Synergy: High-Fidelity, Scalable, Open-Access Cyber Security Testbed for Accelerating Smart Grid Innovations and Deployments
Project Outcomes:
The outcomes of this NSF CPS project include the following:
1) Development of innovative testbed architecture, with suitable abstractions and modularity, for large-scale realistic CPS security testbeds for the smart grid.
2) Designed, implemented, and deployed a high- fidelity, scalable, remote-access testbed for research experimentation.
3) Novel utilization of the testbed to analyze and quantify impacts of cyber attacks, including coordinated attacks, for critical Wide-area Monitoring, Protection, and Control (WAMPAC) applications of the smart grid.
4) Evaluated the effectiveness of anomaly detection and mitigation algorithms (cyber, physical, and cyber-physical) on the testbed for critical WAMPAC applications, such as remedial action scheme, automatic generation control, and wide-area damping control.
5) Conceptualized and piloted a NERC’s GridEx like studies considering dynamic, evolving attack scenarios leveraging the CPS security testbed.
6) Conducted security evaluations of the software platforms and protocols, that are found within the electric power grid, and responsibly disseminating the results to professional community and utility industry.
7) Provided remote access capability to the testbed infrastructure – with sample datasets, models, and use-cases – to benefit a broader community of academic and industry researchers (15+ user organizations, 25+ use-cases);
8) Conducted testbed-based cybersecurity training sessions (12+ instances — at NERC’s GridSec Conference, for multiple utilities in the State of Iowa, for Florida Reliability Coordinating Council, for Idaho Power Company) focusing on attack-defense techniques and tools for utility industry, benefitting 350+ professionals.
9) Hosted a cybersecurity workshop, in partnership with USAID and NARUC, for Black Sea countries utility regulatory professionals, and hosted another workshop for utility industry (in the state of Iowa) in partnership with Iowa State University’s Electric Power Research Center (EPRC)
10) Mentored approximately 10 graduate research assistants in the area of CPS security for smart grid and contributed to the cybersecurity workforce.
11) Developed and taught a graduate level course on CPS security for smart grid (taught 5 instances throughout this project), which contributed to the education and workforce development in this area.
12) The developed CPS security testbed has become an institutional infrastructure at ISU for R&D, educational, and training programs.
13) Disseminated the research results and outcomes via research publications in major IEEE journals and conferences, NSF CPS PI Meetings, Department Homeland Security (DHS) PI Meetings, NSF CPS VO, and NSF-sponsored workshops; (xiv) Broader impacts of this research outcomes in other CPS-based critical infrastructure systems — key outcomes include: the CPS security research experimentation methodology, testbed architectures and abstractions, the remote-access technology to the testbed, cyber attack techniques and tools, cyber defense techniques and tools, and the testbed-based educational and training platform.