Security

Cyborg Beetles, Cyber-security, Smart Buildings, and the Smart Grid

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Cyber beetles provide an interesting glimpse into agent based interactions. Smart grids and smart buildings are integrated today using deep, integration, and complete control of the underlying processes. As more and more nodes are added to any system, the overhead of maintaining all interactions at a central point becomes more significant. In grid-scale systems, system designers have managed complexity by limiting diversity; a system may be managing ten thousand substations, but at least they are identical systems. A current DARPA project dramatically demonstrates a better approach....

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Cyber Security for the Grid

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SCADA security, often called cyber-security when talking of the smart grid, is one of the areas where not only the answers are difficult, but often selecting the right questions is difficult. Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) refers to the on-line, computer-based monitoring and control of process from a central site. SCADA, which puts little intelligence into the distributed points, is still the primary model used for utility distribution systems, including the telemetry and operation of today’s dumb grid.

The SCADA model of systems architecture was appropriate when...

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Nuclear Zombies and the Smart Grid

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Today I’m thinking about the unconventional security problems of the smart grid. This means that I am considering the special issues of widely dispersed intelligent devices. I am also becoming the 1,142nd blogger to write about the newly recognized zombie menace in Texas.

Widely distributed assets cannot be entirely protected against direct physical access. If responsibility for the distributed assets is distributed as well, as they would be in Distributed Generation (DG) and Net Zero Energy (NZE) scenarios, then it is foolish to act as if...

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The Sound of Breaking Glass

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I love the sound of breaking glass
Deep into the night
I Iove the work on it can do
Oh a change of mind
Oh change of mind, sound of breaking glass
All around, sound of breaking glass

Nothing new, sound of breaking glass

Nick Lowe

Security in the built world is most critical at precisely those times when the demands for performance and interaction are greatest. Buildings may lose their communications with the outside world when partially destroyed. The power grid may require ad hoc reconfiguration when its communication lines are down.

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