Interface Categories 1-4: Interfaces between Control Systems and Equipment

Logical Interface Characteristics

Description of Interface Category Types of Data Standards used for these Categories Cybersecurity Requirements Cybersecurity Concerns and Failures

Categories 1-4:

Interface between control systems and equipment

  • With or without high availability, and
  • With or without compute and/or bandwidth constraints

Logical Interfaces:

  • U3
  • U67
  • U79
  • U81
  • U82
  • U85
  • U102
  • U117
  • U135
  • U136
  • U137

Real-time power system data:

  • alarms
  • status
  • measurements
  • control settings
  • control commands

Maintenance data:

  • equipment health data
  • event logs
  • updated settings
  • configuration updates
  • software updates

Information standards:

 

Network standards:

  • Wide Area Networks, as defined in the profiles of the standards

 

Cybersecurity standards

 

Cybersecurity requirements::

  • Availability = H
  • Integrity = H
  • Confidentiality = L
  • Privacy = L

NISTIR 7628 Catalog of Security Requirements

  • SG.AC-14 Permitted Actions without Identification or Authentication
  • SG.IA-4 User Identification and Authentication
  • SG.IA-5 Device Identification and Authentication
  • SG.IA-6 Authenticator Feedback
  • SG.SC-3 Security Function Isolation
  • SG.SC-5 Denial-of-Service Protection
  • SG.SC-7 Boundary Protection
  • SG.SC-8 Communication Integrity
  • SG.SC-9 Communication Confidentiality (?)
  • SG.SI-7 Software and Information Integrity

Cybersecurity Concerns & Failures:

  • Denial of service
  • Lost data
  • Modified data
  • Unvalidated data
  • Late data
  • Lack of data quality information
  • Lack of alarms or event notifications
  • Lack of alternate sources of critical information
  • Invalid commands