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495 - Special Topics: Cybersecurity and the Grid

Core/Elective: Elective
Credits: 0.5
Quarter Taught: Spring

 

Synopsis:

This class introduces concepts around the real-time operation of the grid, and the intersection between Information Technology (IT) systems, Operational Technology (OT) systems, real-time system operations, and cybersecurity. In order to achieve the higher levels of efficiencies needed for a decarbonizing bulk power system (BPS), our reliance on increasing numbers of sensors, computer systems, automation, and communications protocols continues to increase. Many technologies employed in the operations of the grid (e.g., circuit breakers, switches, relays) are increasingly computer-operated and software defined, cultural changes in the energy industry and new vectors for both increased security and increased security risks grows. We will explore the emerging state of systems from the grid edge to the core transmission system, and how the humans responsible for building, planning, and managing the system, must work in a changing environment to ensure a secure and reliable system. We will investigate the changing world of “normal” grid operations to emergency restoration and response within the context of an increasingly complex and complicated cyber-physical nexus on the grid. Our goal is to highlight how resilient and robust cybersecurity requires several
technological and human factors to work in concert together.

 

Course Objectives:

  • Build a foundation of understanding about how the energy system’s complexity and
    complicatedness is growing, and how it affects real-time operations
  • Set a baseline knowledge level about Operational Technology (OT) cyber requirements, from
    design to real-time monitoring to emergency response.
  • Understand the challenges faced as core assumptions about how the grid operates are
    changing, and the role of technologies shifts, but does not remove, risks of unintended
    outcomes.
  • Understand the growing challenges and concerns the industry is seeing about cyber security
    (e.g., Critical Infrastructure Protection standards, supply chain attacks, etc.)