CloudZero: Securing the Cloud for Energy Systems (Text Version)

This is the text version of the video CloudZero: Securing the Cloud for Energy Systems.

CloudZero is evaluating the secure management of complex energy systems from the cloud. Using the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) Cyber Range, NREL developed a testbed to pilot cloud connectivity and security. In three use cases, researchers studied and demonstrated the cloud’s ability to offer critical system restoration, time series forecasting, and bulk power system reliability.

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>> Narrator: Energy system data is moving to the cloud, but cybersecurity is not being left behind.

Utilities are moving their data to the cloud because of its greater capacity, lower costs, improved load forecasting, and advanced recovery options.

[Text on screen: Cloud Migration Advantages – Greater capacity, lower costs, improved load forecasting, advanced recovery options]

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, or NREL, is showing that cloud servers offer utilities the best of all worlds: Unlimited storage resilient recovery, enhanced cybersecurity, and flexibility for emerging clean energy systems.

To answer questions about the risks of cloud environments for the electric sector, NREL created a testbed where utilities and partners can pilot cloud connectivity and security.

>> Anthony Wallace, Cyber Security and Resilience Researcher, National Renewable Energy Laboratory: Utilities nowadays are really worried about what’s going to happen when—and actually what's already happening moving to the cloud.

They want to know what’s going to happen, when it’s going to happen, and the testbed that we’ve created allows us to test these theories hopefully supporting future regulation or future rule making for some of the regulators looking to better improve the security of cloud deployments from a utility perspective.

>> Narrator: With NREL’s cloud testbed, researchers simulated utility systems, their data, and their controls to discover any risks of operating from the cloud.

The cloud testbed contains scalable high fidelity grid models, allowing operators to emulate actual threats in live scenarios within a virtual city.

>> Anthony Wallace: There is a ton of reliability to be gained using cloud services, that’s from a failover perspective but also from just being able to democratize that ability to process data in mass.

>> Narrator: To create this testbed for the electric industry, the U.S. Department of Energy supported NREL in a project named CloudZero, using Amazon Web Services.

>> Anthony Wallace: So, what we learned is to look at higher fidelity environments and answer harder questions, things like what happens when we start adding virtual power plants to a setup, which is a new concept that everybody’s starting to deal with.

>> Narrator: With input from the industry, NREL designed and implemented three cloud use cases: High availability of critical data analysis operations, high fidelity load forecasting, and bulk electric system reliability operations.

[Text on screen: Cloud Exploratory Use Cases: 1) High availability/resiliency and scaling, 2) High fidelity load forecasting, 3) Bulk electric system reliability operations]

In these use cases, NREL simulated known attacks on the cloud to test and model their effects on a large urban power system.

For example, in one scenario an attacker accessed the cloud to pollute the data for load forecasts. Through these use cases, NREL evaluated cloud scenarios to help industry protect its data and to validate the testbed for future experiments.

Through the CloudZero project, NREL showed that cloud solutions can meet system requirements, including minimal latency, critical system restoration, time series forecasting, and bulk electric service operations.

[Text on screen: Requirements demonstrated: Minimal latency, critical system restoration, time series forecasting, and bulk electric service operations]

As cloud resources increasingly support our daily lives, their use in critical infrastructure will grow beyond these initial use cases.

There is much to learn about emerging cloud security, and NREL can help partners explore opportunities.

NREL’s CloudZero testbed is part of a larger capability called the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems Cyber Range that offers partners next generation cyber testing within a full power grid.

Using these capabilities, researchers are able to perform detailed experiments on partners’ systems and reduce their risks by designing cyber resilience directly into utility systems.

To get involved with NREL’s cloud testing capabilities, visit nrel.gov.

[Animated NREL logo on screen]

[Text on screen: nrel.gov/security-resilience/work-with-us]

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