Abstract
In this work, we draft a methodology to build a cyber-security digital twin of a Smart Grid, starting from its architectural blueprint. The idea of a digital twin is not new and has recently been proposed as a means to enable simulations for the purpose of environmental protection where tests on the real system are difficult or expensive. The novelty in our work is in proposing and analyzing the possibility to dynamically align the digital twin with its real counterpart. As a preliminary step toward the synthesis of a Digital Twin for the Smart Grid, we propose the adoption of an architectural view that gets dynamically aligned with the state of the world at deploy and operation time. In this manner, we lay out the basis for a maintenance-aware model, which is at the core of the “digital twin” concept. The availability of a digital twin allows the enforcement of policies for the devices when they connect to the Grid. This paves the way for a Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA), as introduced in this work.
G. P. Sellitto and H. Aranha—Independent Scholars.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Distribution System Operators (DSOs) are the operating managers (and sometimes owners) of energy distribution networks, operating at low, medium or high voltage levels.
- 2.
We use the SMT-LIB specifications since they are standard and adopted by most of the SMT solvers available.
- 3.
- 4.
The language is implemented and available at http://github.com/mascanc.
- 5.
The Digital Twin could be seen as a view in itself, but in this case it gains the status of an autonomous concept, a sort of personified notion.
- 6.
To highlight the underlying concern, we choose to define a specific view, instead of recurring to existing architectural views, but this artefact can be implemented as a function.
References
Pavleska, T., Aranha, H., Masi, M., Sellitto, G.P.: Drafting a cybersecurity framework profile for smart grids in EU: a goal-based methodology. In: Bernardi, S., et al. (eds.) EDCC 2020. CCIS, vol. 1279, pp. 143–155. Springer, Cham (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58462-7_12
Smart Grid Coordination Group: Smart grid reference architecture. Technical report, vol. 2012. CEN-CENELEC-ETSI, November 2012
SG-CG/M490/: Smart Grid Information Security. Standard, CEN, CENELEC, ETSI, December 2014
Masi, M., Pavleska, T., Aranha, H.: Automating smart grid solution architecture design. In: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids, SmartGridComm 2018, Aalborg, Denmark, 29–31 October 2018, pp. 1–6. IEEE (2018)
Cherdantseva, Y., Hilton, J.: A reference model of information assurance & security. In: Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security, ARES 2013, pp. 546–555. IEEE Computer Society, USA (2013)
Barrett, C., Stump, A., Tinelli, C.: The SMT-LIB standard: Version 2.0. Technical report, University of Iowa (2010)
Burns, B.: Designing Distributed Systems: Patterns and Paradigms for Scalable, Reliable Services. O’Reilly Media Inc., Sebastopol (2018)
Gartner Corp.: GridWise Interoperability Context-Setting Framework. Standard, GridWise Architecture Council, March 2021
Zero Trust Architecture. White paper, NIST, August 2020
Wolff, E., Prinz, H.: Service Mesh Primer. Leanpub, Victoria, BC, Canada (2019)
NIST: Framework and Roadmap of Smart Grid Interoperability Standards, Release 4.0 (2020)
OpenADR Alliance: OpenADR 2.0a Profile Specification (2020)
The Open Group: TOGAF 9.2 (2019)
European Commission ISA2: European Interoperability Reference Architecture (2020)
Gottschalk, M., Uslar, M., Delfs, C.: The Use Case and Smart Grid Architecture Model Approach: The IEC 62559–2 Use Case Template and the SGAM Applied in Various Domains, 1st edn. Springer, Heidelberg (2017)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Sellitto, G.P., Aranha, H., Masi, M., Pavleska, T. (2021). Enabling a Zero Trust Architecture in Smart Grids Through a Digital Twin. In: Adler, R., et al. Dependable Computing - EDCC 2021 Workshops. EDCC 2021. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1462. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86507-8_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86507-8_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-86506-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-86507-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)