Emerging Security Standards to the EU power Network controls and other Critical Equipment
ESSENCE is a project funded by the CIPS programme to evaluate costs and benefits of applying emerging security standards to the European power grid controls systems, based on two case studies.
As it is well known, power system controls are vulnerable to cyber-attacks that can inhibit their operation, corrupt valuable data, and expose private information. Such attacks may affect large portions of the European power system, make repair difficult and cause huge societal impact, so that pressure to ensure cyber-security of control and communication systems is now very strong worldwide. To that aim, several cyber-security frameworks have been developed or are under development at present, both in the form of guidelines and proper standards, but it was rather difficult to anticipate costs and benefits of their adoption, although worldwide experience had shown that both are huge. Over 2012-2014, the ESSENCE project performed a study based on two case study (a generation company in Italy and a Transmission system operator in Poland) in order to evaluate these costs and benefits.
For more info please visit the project website: http://essence.ceris.cnr.it