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- Cybersecurity for Energy Systems

| Presenter: Tim Watkins | Leave a Comment

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Cybersecurity solutions for critical energy infrastructure are imperative and they must be carefully engineered to develop reliable systems. Cybersecurity for the modernized power grid is bringing together two different communities: Information technology (IT) and Operational technology (OT). The IT and OT environments differ in important ways but each has benefits that can be gained from the other. Therefore, it is necessary to adapt IT in order to develop tailored cybersecurity protections for OT systems. In order to address this situation, the Department of Energy (DOE) established the Cybersecurity for Energy Delivery Systems (CEDS) R&D program. CEDS envisions and supports the design, installation, operation and maintenance of resilient energy delivery control systems capable of surviving a cyber incident while still sustaining critical functions.

This presentation will review various CEDS R&D projects in which Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL) has been involved including an overview of Operational Technology-Software Defined Networking (OT-SDN). The goal of the Watchdog project was to develop a managed switch with an integrated deny by default all-layer firewall and network access control. Watchdog performs deep packet inspection using a whitelist configuration approach to establish a set of known, allowed communications and quarantines malicious traffic and unregistered devices. By leveraging software defined network (SDN) technology, the Chess Master project developed a security validation and policy enforcement application that connects into a flow controller managing all field networks centrally. The project identified unexpected cyber activity to help prevent an intrusion and developed pre-engineered responses to adapt and survive should an intrusion occur. Visualization tools for threat situational awareness provided operators with a global view of the status of their entire network.

This upcoming webinar will held on June 21 @ 12:00 pm EDT

 

Presenter

Tim Watkins
Tim Watkins
Tim Watkins is a Lead Application Engineer for Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Inc. in Pullman, Washington. He retired in 2013 as a decorated Marine Corps Officer and immediately began working for SEL. He currently works in the SEL’s Secure Engineering branch of Research and Development. Tim has a M.S.A in International Leadership from Central Michigan University (2010) and graduated at the top of his class in a masters level US Army Telecommunications and Systems Engineering Course (2005). His career path in the Marine Corps involved the design and implementation of communications infrastructure. Tim has managed multi-state WANs and has been deployed multiple times. During his deployments, he implemented secure communication networks in austere environments for over 40,000 Marines. Prior to his retirement, he was heavily involved in developing and implementing cyber plans, policies, and procedures at the highest levels of DoD. Tim is currently combining SEL's products into a defendable system using SEL’s best practices. The system, combined with training, will assist others in building a defendable architecture. An architecture which will reduce risk, increase resiliency, and continually mature SEL's best practices for control systems. One of the key factors to a defendable OT system is ability to whitelist network communications. Tim has been signification involved in the development of SEL’s OT Software Defined Networking switch. He believes that this technology not only increases the usability and performance of a network, but that it also significantly raises the cybersecurity and visibility of the network. Co-Authored Paper - Defense-in-Depth Security for Industrial Control Systems
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