A Review on Cybersecurity in Smart Local Energy Systems: Requirements, Challenges, and Standards

TL;DR

This review analyzes existing cybersecurity standards for Smart Local Energy Systems (SLES), highlighting their fragmentation, the need for better security and privacy measures, and proposing future directions for industry and regulation.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of current standards, assesses their compatibility with SLES, and identifies gaps and future focus areas for enhancing cybersecurity in SLES.

Findings

Many standards meet SLES application requirements.

Standards increasingly address information security and privacy.

Industry needs more affordable, secure devices and services.

Abstract

Smart local energy system (SLES) is considered as a promising pathway facilitating a more effective and localised operation, benefited from the complex information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructures and Internet of things (IoT) technologies. As a part of the critical infrastructure, it is important to not only put effective detection and management to tackle potential cybersecurity issues, but also require considerable numbers of standards to ensure the security of the internet of things system to minimise the risks. This study aims to review the existing standards, investigate how the compatibility with SLES development, and identify the area to focus on in the future. Although existing standards and protocols are highly fragmented, our findings suggest that many of them can meet the requirements of the applications and infrastructures of SLES. Additionally, many standards have been introduced to protect information security and personal privacy due to their increasing importance. The research also suggests that the industry needs to produce more affordable and cyber-secured devices and services. For the government and regulators, relevant guidelines on the minimum function and security requirements for applications should be provided. Additionally, compliance testing and certifications should be in place and carried out by an independent third party to ensure the components of SLES ecosystem with a satisfied security level by design.