Projects

The Integrative Security Assessment of Smart Grid Cyber Infrastructure project is the biggest project in the Smart Grid subprogram at the Advanced Digital Sciences Center (ADSC). As part of this project, we have results in the following areas:
Workflow-oriented Security Assessment Framework
We use workflow models to unify heterogeneous information about system components, their properties, and possible attacks in a graphical manner to argue about security goals.  This approach can provide quantitative security assessment for complex systems (like the smart grid) in an automated fashion.
assessment-framework
Cyber Security Argument Graph Evaluation (CyberSAGE) Tool
We are developing a software tool that produces quantitative security assessment metrics and security assurance documentation to support the safe, reliable, and secure operation of critical infrastructure systems. The tool, which is built using Java for cross-platform compatibility, is an implementation of ADSC’s workflow-oriented security assessment framework.
cybersage-tool
Smart Grid Case Studies
We carry out detailed smart grid case studies to inform the design of our security assessment framework. By taking a holistic approach, we have assessed smart grid security under several real-world attack scenarios, including dynamic pricing attack and remote meter disconnect attack.
case-studies
Theoretical Analysis
We produce fundamental theoretical results to support our security assessment efforts. For example, we characterize how much extra communication complexity would be required to tolerate attacks when computing functions over distributed inputs. Our strong lower bound results answer an open question about fault-tolerant protocol design. Similarly, we are developing an approximation algorithm for the solution of Markov games, to allow complex modeling of attacker and defender interactions with reduced computation complexity.
defense-strategy-state-machine