Cyber Physical Security for Last Mile in Smart Grid

Abstract

The last mile in smart grid comprise of gateways and electricity meters. These further can be connected to households (Residential), industrial and commercial Units or grid itself. Utility through network management systems provides controls operation of these edge devices. The smart edge devices further with the available processing power have potential to offer edge computing and control of smart devices and sensors connected to them. The distributed computing paradigm introduces a shift in security schemes. These edge devices are resource constrained devices limiting the choice in terms of security methods and requires decentralized trust model. This paper elaborates the threats and advantages of smart end points and edge computing and control. This also highlights how with inclusion of security at application layer helps bridge the gap of traditional enterprise security which focuses only on layer 3 and 4 for network security. Further the paper will take a closer look at various threats and how industrial protocol extends the traditional cyber security to include domain know how and business logics to provide better security against such threats. We conclude with how to future proof these solutions from future attacks and how securing last mile results in a secure smart grid.