Securing Smart Grid by Understanding Communicatons Infrastructure Dependencies

Abstract: The presentation will talk about our work on the topic so far. In particular, we will present a new lightweight integrity checking algorithm for smart grid communications that can meet the stringent latency requirements of protection switching. We will also discuss a novel method to detect data falsification attacks on smart meters.

Krishna Kant is currently a professor in the Computer and Information Science Department at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA where he directs the IUCRC center on Intelligent Storage. Earlier he was a research professor in the Center for Secure Information Systems (CSIS) at George Mason University. From 2008-2013 he served as a program director at NSF where he managed the computer systems research (CSR) program and was instrumental in the development and running of NSF-wide sustainability initiative called SEES (science, engineering and education for sustainability). Prior to NSF, he served in industry for 18 years (at Intel, Bellcore, and Bell Labs) and 10 years in academia (at Penn State and Northwestern Univ.). He received his Ph.D. degree in Mathematical Sciences from University of Texas at Dallas in 1981. He carries a combined 35 years of experience in academia, industry, and government. He has published in a wide variety of areas in computer science, authored a graduate textbook on performance modeling of computer systems. His research interests span a wide range including energy efficiency, robustness, and security in cyber and cyber-physical systems. He is a Fellow of IEEE.