Developing a Robust Communication Infrastructure for a Distributed Smart Grid IDS

The ongoing energy transition increasingly relies on a resilient communication infrastructure for monitoring, controlling, and optimizing the performance of energy distribution. In energy distribution systems, this is nowadays realized by Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) networks, which communicate sensor data and commands to the actuators. As also witnessed in other application areas, an integrated communication infrastructure can leverage cyber attacks. While recent advances in Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) specifically designed for SCADA networks in energy distribution enable the detection of certain domain-specific attacks, they assume the existence of a secure and dependable communication channel and a central entity responsible for coordination. Addressing the mentioned requirements, we propose a resilient decentralized communication architecture for an IDS that operates next to the SCADA communication and uses rumor-spreading algorithms to mitigate central coordination. We discuss essential steps to transition an existing prototype into a real-world application, ensuring security in the evolving smart grid landscape. We showcase the functionality of the robust communication infrastructure using a distributed Raspberry Pi cluster and multiple evaluation scenarios.