Security Protocols Against Cyber Attacks in the Distribution Automation System

Abstract

As a communication technology plays an integral part in a power system, security issues become major concerns. This paper deals with the security problems in the distribution automation system (DAS) which has an inherent vulnerability to cyber attacks due to its high dependency on the communication and geographically widely spread terminal devices. We analyze the types of cyber threats in many applications of the distribution system and formulate security goals. Then we propose an efficient security protocol to achieve these goals. The protocol avoids complex computation of any encryption algorithm, considering resource-constraint network nodes. We also propose a secure key distribution protocol. Finally, we demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed security protocol by experiments.