Security threats and possible safeguard mechanisms under IEC 61850 environment

Smartgrids can operate with better efficiency and productivity thanks to advanced information exchanges. With this capability, power systems can operate in new ways that have not been possible earlier. This may show itself as using novel techniques such as smart electric vehicle charging solutions or operating systems with smaller margins. This requires a fully connected power system where equipment at different locations, domains and layers need to interact with each other. Despite its benefits, such connectivity comes at a huge price: cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Traditionally, power systems only used very limited communication in closed networks. Therefore, cybersecurity solutions have not been used before. To address these issues, recently, there have been efforts to identify and mitigate such threats. This paper presents security threats that are present for communication solutions based on popular IEC 61850 standard and its extensions. It also presents recent efforts to develop safeguard mechanisms in line with IEC 62351 security standard.