SoftGrid: A Software-based Smart Grid Testbed for Evaluating Substation Cybersecurity Solutions

Electrical substations are crucial for power grids. A number of international standards, such as IEC 60870 and 61850, have emerged to enable remote and automated control over substations. However, owing to insufficient security consideration in their design and implementation, the resulting systems could be vulnerable to cyber attacks. As a result, the modernization of a large number of substations dramatically increases the scale of potential damage successful attacks can cause on power grids. To counter such a risk, one promising direction is to design and deploy an additional layer of defense at the substations. However, it remains a challenge to evaluate various substation cybersecurity solutions in a realistic environment. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of SoftGrid, a software-based smart grid testbed for evaluating the effectiveness, performance, and interoperability of various security solutions implemented to protect the remote control interface of substations. We demonstrate the capability and usefulness of SoftGrid through a concrete case study. We plan to open-source SoftGrid to facilitate security research in related areas.