In future smart grids, more active components such as prosumer and the increasing digitization and associated increase in system complexity will increase the risk of ICT incidents and expand the scope for attacking cyber-attacks. This significantly increases the risk of far-reaching system failures. OFFIS now addresses this gap with the Smart Grid Cyber-Resilience Laboratory project, which is funded by the BMWi from the 6th Energy Research Program.

In this project, a test environment is established to test the concepts for system integration and management under uncertain communication and information conditions in digitalized energy supply systems. This unique laboratory design combines techniques for hazard identification and analysis of smart grid architectures with methods for detecting anomalies in information processes at different levels (OT / IT) of today's electric power systems. The purpose of the laboratory environment is to develop preventative security and resilience measures that prevent such incidents, but also to develop and test reactive measures for the rapid detection and immediate handling of physical- and cyber- induced incidents in electric power systems.

The goal of cyber-resilient energy systems is the tolerance for temporary loss of confidentiality and integrity in data communications and other events in the primary or cyber system. One possibility, for example, is to temporarily accept limited efficiency, while still allowing the critical supply task to continue uninterrupted.

In addition to the expansion of the SESA laboratory, in order to be able to simulate such security incidents on a large scale in real time, the focus of the project is on setting up a professional network control room with SCADA systems from German market leaders. In this control room, cyber-resilient functions and procedures should be developed as realistically as possible and be tested in combination with common control systems.

Demonstration Use-Case

The different components available in the Cyber-Resilience Laboratory are put together to develop a demonstration Use-Case in which the resilience of a simplified cyber-physical system may be tested.

The following link contains a document which provides instructions for proper interaction with the real time simulation environment run in this Use Case. Additionally, this document describes an on-line mock-up version of this use case which allows the reader to execute a simplified version of the use case, consisting in merely animations.

LINK to pdf file

The link to the mock-up demo file is available in the following link:

LINK to ppsx file

The pre-requirements for running the on-line mock-up demo is to install Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 or newer versions. For running the real-time simulation environment and run the use case, please contact Michael Brand (Michael.Brand(at)offis.de) to set an appointment.