Exploring emerging cybersecurity risks from network-connected DER devices

Abstract

Future growth in Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) present growing cybersecurity risks as these devices acquire increased networking and remote control capabilities. In this work the cyber-physical risks of consumer-grade DER are described. The work focuses on studying those DER devices that are network enabled and could be exploited by remote entities. Since attacks can range in both the access mechanism and the outcome objective a set of metrics are proposed to classify the cyber-physical attributes of the intrusion, these metrics can later be applied to create a inclusive model that can be used to measure the cybersecurity risks in terms of typical power-system quantities in real-world systems.