Experience with Implementing Cybersecurity in a G&T Cooperative
Over a period of about two years, N-Dimension worked with a generation and transmission (G&T) cooperative to deploy cybersecurity protections throughout the Operations Technology systems of the G&T, its generation plants, and its distribution utility members. In this talk, we describe the scope of this project, the security architecture we proposed, the solutions we deployed, and the unanticipated real-world challenges that we encountered along the way. Many of these challenges had little to do with the technical aspects of cybersecurity, but nevertheless are real issues that will be encountered in most real-world deployments.
Andrew Wright has 20 years of experience in industrial research and development, holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Rice University, and has published numerous technical papers and patents. He guides N-Dimension’s technical strategy for cyber security products and solutions for the smart grid, and has been actively involved in numerous customer engagements and cyber security deployments. He collaborates with various industry working groups, including NIST, SGIP, NESCOR, and TCIPG.
The seminar series is presented by the Trustworthy Cyber Infrastructure for the Power Grid (TCIPG) Project, an $18 million multi-university research effort whose partner institutions include the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Arizona State University, Dartmouth, and Washington State University. The TCIPG Project, a successor to the earlier NSF-funded TCIP Center, was founded in 2009 with support from the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It is housed in the Information Trust Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.