Securing the Electric Grid: Agile Virtualized Substations

Increasingly considered a basic human right, economical electricity service relies upon high-availability grid infrastructure. Grid security must protect end-to-end service delivery—from generation through distribution. The goal of grid security is to make it prohibitively expensive to impact reliable operations or gather intelligence for coordinated advanced attacks. As intelligent hubs for the grid, substations are critical elements that pose unique security challenges.

Economic and evolving business demands have driven grid modernization through system digitalization, all without sacrificing overall mission-critical service availability. Substation security solutions must protect both from physical attacks to underlying infrastructure, such as switchgear and transformers, to cyber-attacks on digitized control and management operations. The security capabilities of these solutions need to adapt to developing threats, and that begins with a Software-Defined Substation Application Architecture built on a highly secure virtualization platform.

A virtualized substation application architecture as an agile security hub for grid distribution

Key Features

• Zero-trust, multi-layer hardware and software security
• NERC CIP & NIST compliance
• Edge security administration protects data ‘at the source’
• Open ecosystem for rapid innovation
  
• A scalable, centralized OT/IT edge system

Substation Security Solution

For More Information

• Advantech: Modernized Grids Require Substation Virtualization
• VMWare: Architecture & Design for a Virtual Infrastructure Workload
• VMWare: Energy Industry Solutions