Bio-inspired cyber security for smart grid deployments

Smart Grid technologies are transforming the electric power system in ways that will significantly impact electric distribution systems and result in greater efficiency. However, the increased scale of the grid and the new types of information it will transmit introduce security risks that cannot be addressed by traditional, centralized security techniques. We propose a scalable approach inspired by the complex-adaptive control systems of social insects, such as ants and bees. These systems emerge from inter-agent communication and the collective application of simple rules. The Digital Ants framework is a bio-inspired framework that uses lightweight, mobile agents. The agents communicate using digital pheromones which enable the agents to alert each other of possible cyber security issues. All communication and coordination is both localized and decentralized thereby allowing the framework to scale across the large numbers of devices that will exist in the Smart Grid. Furthermore, being lightweight makes the agents suitable for implementation on devices with limited computational resources. This paper will provide a brief overview of the Digital Ants framework and then present results from testbed-based demonstrations that show how Digital Ants can identify a cyber security attack scenario against smart meter deployments.