Issues of Cybersecurity 
in Electric Power Systems

The study deals with the cybersecurity concept of cyber-physical electric power systems (EPSs) as a strategic issue of national importance, which affects all strata of society. The link between the cybersecurity of EPSs and Russia's energy security and information security is analyzed. Data on the number of cyberattacks on control systems of industrial enterprises, power plants, and substations for several years are provided. The consequences of cyberattacks for the operability of the EPS physical subsystem and its facilities are analyzed. Areas of research to counteract external cyber threats are outlined. The key findings of the EPS cybersecurity study carried out at the Energy Systems Institute of Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ESI SB RAS) are summarized. Index Terms — Electric power system (EPS), cybersecurity, cyber threats, cyberattacks, counteraction, consequences, key research findings ___________________________________________________ * Corresponding author. E-mail: kolosok@isem.irk. ru http://dx.doi. org/10.38028/esr.2020. 02.0003 Received February 22, 2020. Revised March 30, 2020. Accepted June 02, 2020. Available online October 21, 2020. This is an open access article under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. © 2020 ESI SB RAS and authors. All rights reserved. prospective ones, are getting comparable in complexity and responsibility in terms of ensuring the proper operation of EPSs. Digitalization of the electric power industry implies not only the acceleration of information processing in a digital form but also an increase in efficiency of production processes using the next-generation equipment meeting the IEC standards and the development of new software for control of newly built digital substations, single-area electrical networks, and others. Under these conditions, it is getting increasingly more appropriate to treat EPSs as complex cyber-physical systems (CPS), in which the information-and-communication subsystem can operate inadequately due to internal defects (errors in algorithms, and others), and also can be exposed to unauthorized external actions, i.e., cyberattacks [1-6, and others]. The analysis of events that occur in the process of unfolding of several system accidents in different countries [7] proved the reciprocal influence of failures and disturbances in physical and information-andcommunication subsystems (ICS) of EPSs. Invalid information on the current state of EPS and its loss due to cyberattacks on the ICS can lead to the generation and implementation of wrong control actions and the development of emergencies in the physical subsystem. In turn, the failure of a physical infrastructure element can result in an emergency state of the electrical part and contribute to the malfunction of the information-andcommunication infrastructure control system. This paper covers the basic concepts and definitions related to the EPS cybersecurity, analyzes the effects of cyberattacks on the performance of the physical subsystem of the EPS and its facilities, presents the areas for research to counteract external cyber threats, and discusses the key findings of the EPS cybersecurity studies carried out at the ESI SB RAS. II. BasIc concepts and defInItIons Nowadays, cybersecurity is considered a strategic issue of national importance affecting all strata of society. In December 2016, the USA and Russia published almost simultaneously two official documents: "Joint US & Canada electric grid security and resilience strategy" [8]