Shielding Europe’s electrical and power systems
Europe’s Electrical Power and Energy System (EPES) is one of the most complex cyber-physical systems in the world. Any attacks bringing down this critical infrastructure could have a vast cascading effect on others, including water supply, communications, transportation, industry and finance. “Europe has already experienced significant complex cyberattacks and these attacks are increasing,” says Ghasan Bhatti, project director at Capgemini and PHOENIX project coordinator. “Even simple attacks can be extremely crucial.” In the EU-funded PHOENIX project, researchers developed a cyber-shield security platform for European EPES infrastructure, enabling it to detect and survive large-scale, combined cyber and privacy attacks at a reasonable cost. The PHOENIX consortium was made up of 25 partners spanning the range of required expertise in the EPES cybersecurity field, including energy generation, technology providers, retailers and SMEs. Through five large-scale international pilots, the project assessed all of its developments in real-world scenarios.
Innovating and coordinating Europe’s cyber defences
The PHOENIX project had three major goals. The first was to strengthen EPES cyber defence by designing novel protective concepts for resilience, survivability, self-healing and accountability to be used within Europe’s infrastructure. The PHOENIX team also innovated on existing systems, adapting, upgrading and integrating a number of tools and validating them in large-scale pilots. The second goal was to improve coordination between European EPES cyber incident discovery, response and recovery. To do this, PHOENIX members created a fully decentralised cybersecurity information awareness platform for authorised stakeholders across Europe. The third initiative was to accelerate research and innovation within EPES cybersecurity. The PHOENIX team established a series of certification methods and procedures through a newly created Cybersecurity Certification Centre.
Increasing cyber awareness
The PHOENIX security platform monitors for new incidents, and identifies and mitigates against attacks. PHOENIX generated increased awareness of cyberattacks among stakeholders in European EPES, which resulted in fewer service disruptions due to incidents being detected earlier. “The PHOENIX project developed an ‘Incidents’ Information Sharing Platform’ (I2SP), which allows relevant stakeholders to coordinate, share knowledge of and even advance warnings, complying with the European Commission’s strategy on tackling the rising number of serious cyber incidents,” explains Bhatti. Other tools developed during the project include the ‘Secure, Persistent Communications (SPC)’ platform, a cloud-based communications layer which ensures all data are legitimate and secured. The Privacy Protection Enforcement (PPE) toolkit uses consent-based approaches to evaluate and mitigate risks associated with identified attacks.
Enhancing European cyber policy
The PHOENIX project has a good sustainability plan where all partners are committed to exploiting the PHOENIX outcomes, notes Bhatti. “Some developments from the PHOENIX project will be available as open-source,” he adds. The PHOENIX partners also founded the CyberEPES cluster, a collaborative information-sharing project working under the supervision of the European Commission, which aims to improve EPES cybersecurity in Europe. The PHOENIX team developed 14 policy options – along with 10 major privacy, ethics and security concerns and challenges – based on lessons drawn from the project, which aim to feed into a wider European strategy for cyber defence. “These policy options were a major part of the discussion among the multidisciplinary pool of experts and other projects working in the domain of EPES cybersecurity during the Final workshop of the PHOENIX project,” says Bhatti.
Keywords
PHOENIX, cyber, security, threat, electrical, power, systems, shield, awareness, policy