Further research is needed to ensure the cybersecurity of a smart grid, according to a newly released set of guidelines from a public-private group formed under the aegis of the National Institute of Standards of Technology.

The guidelines come in a three-volume report on high-level requirements regarding cybersecurity strategy and architecture for organizations developing a replacement for the aging electricity infrastructure with a grid that can respond to real-time consumption information gleaned from individual household usage.

The report, released publically on Sept. 2., is authored by the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel's Cyber Security Working Group; NIST launched the panel in November 2009 and it now numbers more than 475 participants from the private, public and academic sectors.

The report advocates a layered approach to security and identifies 137 interfaces--points of data exchange or other types of interactions--which the strategy classifies into 22 categories with similar cybersecurity requirements.

But the report also acknowledges that cybersecurity "is one of the key technical areas where the state of the art falls short of meeting the envisioned functional, reliability and scalability requirements of the smart grid."

Among the unknowns is how the next generation of Internet protocol, IPv6, will impact smart grid security. "It is not obvious that the [IPv6] backbone will function flawlessly," the report states.

Additional research is also needed on algorithms used to obscure privacy data of individual users, according to the report. Privacy groups have expressed concern that the electricity consumption information data of individuals could reveal invasive amounts of information about such things as lifestyle and health.

For more:
- read a NIST release on the release of smart grid cybersecurity guidelines
- download volumes one, two and three of the guidelines (.pdf)

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