Cisco Securing The Smart Grid

Cisco hopes to do more than simply secure a large part of the smart grid market for itself; it’s also hoping that its technology helps prevent the kind of cyber-security breaches that could threaten the nation’s security.

Cisco, SAP, Oracle, IBM, Google and GE are just a few of the major technology vendors offering electric utilities hardware and applications intended to improve the efficiency of power usage. But all this smart metering and increased reliance on intelligence along the electrical grid also creates a security issue, as became clear earlier this year with the news that foreign governments have actually mapped out the nation’s electrical grid. As cyber-terrorism expert Melih Abdulhayoglu told me a few weeks ago, “People are looking at enablement, [but] not figuring out vulnerabilities that enablement brings. But there has to be a standard for putting things online, especially when it concerns our national security.”

The idea of adding intelligence of this sort to the electrical grid has been bandied around for years, but the Obama stimulus package provides significant monetary incentives for utilities to implement those tools in the coming months — something about which technology companies are keenly aware. For instance, SAP is pushing software that allows utilities to monitor their carbon emissions and costs and measure them against industry benchmarks. Oracle also introduced software this week that includes smart meter data management, customer billing, load analysis, and workforce management applications. GE announced that it will provide a Colorado utility with tools dealing with power interruptions and communications with customers, while IBM announced that it will double down on the government’s stimulus package with a $2 billion investment fund of its own.

One tool utilities are eagerly adopting is smart meter technology, which can help them reduce electricity demands during peak periods. Utilities waste a lot of power because they generate power for peak levels throughout the day — not just as needed — so any reduction in peak usage will translate into a reduction in overall power generation. Smart meters are supposed to help consumers and business monitor their own usage — and can be used by utilities to offer incentives like lower rates to users who agree to run their dishwashers between one o’clock and five o’clock in the morning.

But smart meters necessarily create a security risk because they create a network. Cisco, which announced a smart grid initiative last week that didn’t do much beyond rebranding existing product offerings, believes its experience in networking in general, and network security in particular, will stand it in good stead when it comes to securing the electrical grid to prevent the kind of cyber-breaches that concern security experts.

Inbar Lasser-Raab, a Cisco executive, agreed that smart grids need to adopt rigorous standards that include security. “The market understands the importance of standards and the need to bring disparate networks into an infrastructure where everyone can communicate securely,” she told me.

According to Lasser-Raab, that standard already exists — the IP protocol. She said Cisco is using the most recent standard for IP networks — IPv6 — and noted that the electric grid will not use the Internet itself, which uses a much weaker security standard. “The smart grid networks that utilities create will not be Internet-based — they will be private IP networks,” she said.

Lasser-Raab also noted that Cisco doesn’t stand to pick up any stimulus checks — at least not directly — because the funds are going to the utilities; but the tech vendors are fully aware that the utility companies won’t be building the smart grid themselves, which is why they’re preening for the cameras like contestants at a beauty contest. The only real suspense, though, is which vendor will get the biggest prize, because in this contest, there are only winners.

[Image source: Wikimedia Commons]