CISW-SG 2010
Smart Grid Survivability Workshop
October 13-14, 2010

NRECA Conference Center
Arlington, Virginia USA
(Washington, D.C. area)

Sponsored by: IEEE Systems Council

 

Workshop Approach and Objectives

Primed by keynotes, invited presentations, panel sessions, and group discussions, participants in this workshop will brainstorm and identify research challenges and strategic approaches in software and systems engineering that will address the ultimate survivability of the smart grid against catastrophic failures induced by malicious or accidental cyber-physical events. Participants will have the opportunity to contribute to a post-workshop report on the proposed set of research topics and strategies to be published by the IEEE Systems Council. We expect that at the end of the workshop, participants will share a better understanding of promising areas for future research and practice in building a survivable smart grid. We also anticipate that participants will have made contacts for future information exchange and possible collaborative research projects. Stay tuned to this website for a detailed agenda and further information for participants as the date of the workshop approaches.

Workshop Background

Our society’s critical infrastructures are increasingly reliant on large-scale, massively-interconnected systems and devices, highly-distributed applications, Internet-based technologies, wireless communications, and widely-available commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components. These underlying technologies offer the promise of unprecedented levels of sophisticated control, efficiency, and cost savings. However, in the absence of mature system and software engineering methods and their careful application, these technologies have made our critical infrastructures ever more vulnerable to disruption by malicious and accidental cyber incidents. Coordinated physical and cyber attacks can amplify the impact and duration of a disruption. Moreover, the increasing interdependence of our critical infrastructures means that a vulnerability in one infrastructure can be parlayed by an attacker into a exploitation that spans multiple infrastructures and dramatically increases the societal impact.

The electric power infrastructure is a primary foundation of contemporary society. Efforts to modernize our nation’s electric power infrastructure through the overlay of two-way digital communications and highly automated digital control (to create a so-called “smart grid”) are based on the admirable promise of greater energy efficiency, a more reliable self-healing grid, energy conservation, and significant reductions in peak energy usage (thereby reducing the need to continually increase generation capacity to meet increasing demand). Requirements for very high levels of interoperability and cyber security remain major stumbling blocks to progress. The development of interoperability and cybersecurity standards and best practices for the emerging smart grid is proceeding at a breathtaking pace. Nonetheless, despite the standards developers' best efforts, there remain gaps in the software and system engineering foundations necessary to ensure that new smart grid functionality will be secure, safe, survivable, reliable, and resilient.

Many research challenges in software and system engineering need to be addressed for the full vision of the emerging smart grid's benefits to be realized. The most fundamental of these research and engineering challenges is how to design, configure, and operate the smart grid’s systems and components in a manner that prevents an adverse cyber-physical event (whether accidental or malicious in origin) from having a catastrophic impact on the grid and on society at large. For examples of the kinds of adverse events we are concerned with, see the “Coordinated Attack Risk” chapter of the recent joint report by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on High-Impact, Low-Frequency Event Risk to the North American Bulk Power System. Other suggested background reading material for workshop participants includes the DOE Roadmap to Secure Control Systems in the Energy Sector, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Workshop on Future Directions in Cyber-Physical Systems Security.

 

 

CISW-SG 2010

Important Dates

Registration Deadline: October 11, 2010
CISW-SG Workshop: October 13-14, 2010
CISW-SG Report Published by IEEE: Approximately three months after the workshop

Questions? Write to IEEE CISW-SG 2010, or call +1 412-268-9858

Workshop Organization

General Chair/Program Co-Chair
Howard Lipson – CERT, Software Engineering Institute

Program Co-Chair
Michael Assante – NBISE (former CSO, North American Electric Reliability Corporation)

Program Co-Chair
Stacy Prowell – Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Treasurer
Bob Rassa – Raytheon Company

Last updated September 16, 2010