Win-Win Security Approaches for Smart Grid Communications Networks

The smart grid introduces communication capability into various components of the power system to facilitate information exchange. This also makes the smart grid more vulnerable to cyber attacks ranging from hacking of customer details to disrupting the operation of the power grid. When the provision of security functions does not lead to a "win-win" situation, it means that at least one participant does not gain anything or its profit is less than its loss. As a result, the participant has no incentive to provide security functions. We believe that smart grid security will be fully successful if and only if it makes all participants winners. In this article, we point out that existing smart grid security approaches lead to zero-sum or win-lose situations. Then, we study and suggest how to change these non-win-win situations to win-win situations. We also use network forensics in smart grids as an example to illustrate how to design effective cyber security mechanisms with a win-win objective.