Using cybersecurity as an engineering education approach on computer engineering to learn about Smart Grid technologies and the next generation of electric power systems

The security of our country is constantly being threatened. In order to ensure protection for our society, it is necessary to detect vulnerabilities in critical systems before terrorists or other adversaries are able to exploit them. Part of these vulnerabilities could be solved by improving the effectiveness of certain systems, for example, the electric power system. This system, also known as an electrical grid, can be dramatically improved by utilizing Smart Grid technologies. These technologies can incorporate a large number of features to the current system, which facilitate the production and distribution of electrical energy from the power plants to the customers. Electric companies usually employ the use of a software called Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) to control this type of systems. The focus of this work is using cybersecurity in Smart Grid systems as a engineering education tool. Students will begin by examining, in a simulated environment with two different machines, the process in which an attacker could potentially penetrate and compromise a computer inside the running SCADA software. The attacker computer has a set of software tools that help in the penetration testing process and the victim computer runs a commercially available SCADA software. These experiments provide computer engineering students with a hands on experience in Smart Grid cybersecurity-related issues.