SUCCESS - Securing Critical Energy Infrastructures
The success project will develop an overarching approach to threat and countermeasure analysis with special focus on the vulnerabilities introduced by Smart Meters. Success will achieve this objective by encapsulating the key challenges of Security, Resilience, Survivability and Privacy in 3 use cases which will focus the Research, Implementation and Evaluation concepts.
Living in a safe and secure society is a fundamental human need. The security of critical infrastructures must be maintained so that supplies of power, water or other resources are secured. Modern critical infrastructures are increasingly complex and they are turning into Cyber-Physical Infrastructures because ICT is growing in importance in infrastructure management. The SUCCESS project will develop an overarching approach to threat and countermeasure analysis with special focus on the vulnerabilities introduced by Smart Meters. Using a security by design approach focussing on resiliency and survivability, SUCCESS will propose a new joint design of Energy Infrastructure and ICT. SUCCESS will build on these research results, implementing a New-generation Open Real-time Smart Meter (NORM). NORM aims to secure the end nodes of the energy system while providing innovative services in a customer centric grid.
At systems level, a cloud approach, based on double virtualization, is proposed. SUCCESS will provide security countermeasures, Security Monitoring Centres at DSO and Pan-European levels, secure communications solutions using Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) and the LTE and 5G mobile communication technologies. This work will be complemented by data privacy studies to ensure the acceptability of the results by consumers. Trials will be run in Ireland, Italy and Romania.
Outcome
SUCCESS will produce a comprehensive framework for securing Smart Grids and similar critical infrastructures expressed as:
- A set of concepts for Security, Resilience, Survivability and Privacy by design,
- Further development of the New-generation Open Real-time Smart Meter (NORM) produced by the NobelGrid project www.nobelgrid.eu with security functionality and the inclusion of a Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU),
- A range of prototypes and blueprints for future energy and ICT sector products and services,
- Recommendations on countermeasures to address short, medium and long term threats
- The SUCCESS platform implementing countermeasures at TRL-4 level and demonstrated in field trials Specifications for Certification testing and standardization of the approaches.
Partners
The partners comprise grid operators in Ireland, Italy and Romania, ICT companies (including Engineering, Ericsson) as well as security specialists.
ACS Role
ACS’s role includes overall technical management, Survivability by Design concept and implementation, real-time simulation, development of Phasor Measurement Unit inside NORM and cloud platform development.
Latest News
- First project deliverables released in July 2016
- D3.1: “Privacy-Preserving Information Security Architecture, V1”
- D4.1 “Solution Architecture and Solution Description, V1”
- Project Meeting in Terni, Italy 20-21 September at premises of the project partner ASM Terni, the local Distribution System Operator.
- Further project deliverables released in October 2016:
- D1.1 "Identification of Existing Threats V1"
- D2.1 "Recommendation on how to develop data provacy compliant countermeasures"
- D6.1 "Report on Marketing and Tools V1"
- D6.4 "Report on Standardisation and Policies V1"
- D6.9 "Report on Events V1"
Sponsor
This project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, under Grant Agreement no 700416 and runs from May 2015 to the end of October 2018.
Announcements
SUCCESS project held its third and final open day, hosted by ESB in Dublin. The event was addressed by ESB CEO and other ESB top executives were present, e.g. the responsible for cyber-security. ESB supported the project's approach to combatting attacks on critical infrastructures and anticipate the need to invest in this area. A highlight was the address of Kevin Foley of the Irish body which co-ordinates fighting cyber-attacks, the National Cyber Security Centre, explaining their work and that they already try to co-ordinate information sharing between actors such as critical infrastructure operators, authorities and firms. SUCCESS is proposing developing an automated system to support this information sharing, and it was the consensus that this is needed.
The SUCCESS final review was held on 29.11, ending the project.
On July 30th ACS organized the first hackathon of the SUCCESS project. The event was hosted by the Institute for Theoretical Information Technology of RWTH Aachen. During the hackathon students and researchers were invited to test the SUCCESS Security Solution and, specifically, the Data Centric Security solution developed by ERICSSON in the scope of the SUCCESS project.
The 2nd SUCCESS open day took place with a public event in Bucharest on 28.06 and a visit to two of the three locations of the Romanian field trial (at Stalpu and Ploesti) on 29.06.
Dr. Gianluca Lipari and Padraic McKeever represented ACS in the SUCCESS Project meeting in Athens, hosted by Synelixis.
On April 19th, the SUCCESS project opened the doors of the field trial site in Terni, Italy, displaying the solutions developed for protecting Critical Infrastructures from cyber-threats. A low-cost Phasor Measurement Unit which is being developed by ACS has been delivered to the field trial sites in Terni and Romania. At the same time in Terni, the second Project Advisory Board meeting was hosted, where the project team got feedback on its work so far and advice on how to improve for the rest of the project. The SUCCESS security solution works at several different levels: It introduces a new Smart Meter with enhanced security funcitons New security functionality is being developed at the edge of the 5G mobile communications network to detect and mitigate tampering with communications. A Security Operations Centre is being developed which can detect and mitigate cyber-attacks on a critical infrastructure. A Europe-wide information sharing and security analytics network is proposed to allow the infrastructure operators and authorities to share information and benefit from others' knowledge. ACS, represented by Dr. Gianluca Lipari, Padraic McKeever and Igor Sowa, presented the contributions given to the project and demonstrated some of the techniques developed for the cybersecurity of Critical Energy Infrastructures.
Prof. Monti, Dr. Gianluca Lipari, Padraic McKeever, Abhinav Sadu and Igor Sowa attended the SUCCESS Project meeting in Bruxelles, hosted by Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
The next SUCCESS consortium meeting will take place in Cork, Ireland, on 12th-13th October. The hosts will be the ESB, the Irish electrical utility operator.
SUCCESS will have a booth at the European Utility Week in Amsterdam, 3rd-5th October.
ACS, represented by Prof. Monti, Gianluca Lipari and Padraic McKeever, joined the SUCCESS project meeting and first Advisory Board meeting in Stockholm, hosted by KTH - Royale Institute of Technology.
ACS hosted the first review of the SUCCESS project. Prof. Monti, as technical manager, Gianluca Lipari and Padraic McKeever represented ACS, presenting the results of the project obtained so far and demonstrating the SUCCESS Security Monitoring Architecture and the developed security and resiliency solutions in the ACS laboratory.
ACS at the Fraunhofer IoT Innovation and Networking Days in Bonn. ACS, represented by Gianluca Lipari, joined the Fraunhofer IoT Innovation and Networking Days, presented the vision and the first results of the H2020 Project SUCCESS.
The Consortium Meeting of SUCCESS took place in Arnhem at premises of partner DNV-GL on February 2-3. The following deliverables have been released in January: D3.4 Information Security Management Components and Documentation, V1; D3.10 Integration and Validation Plan. Test and certification specifications, V1; D4.4 Description of available components for SW functions, infrastructure and related documentation, V1
The 1st H2020 SUCCESS Innovation Event took place in Terni, Italy on 22 September.
The 2nd H2020 SUCCESS Project Meeting took place in Terni, Italy on 20-21 September.
19./20. May 2016 – Kick-off Meeting EU Horizon 2020 project SUCCESS (Securing Critical Energy Infrastructures). Prof. Monti as Technical Manager of the project joins the Kick-Off Meeting with his team.