NEW version of the Famous Whitepaper Requirements for Secure Control and Telecommunication Systems

The Austrian, German, and Swiss Utilities have published (with the support of Dr. Stephan Beirer and Marl Joos (GAI NetConsult GmbH, Berlin/Germany)) the Version 3.0 of the famous 

Whitepaper Requirements for Secure Control and Telecommunication Systems

The English version (pdf, 88 pages) could be downloaded HERE.

Die deutsche Version (pdf, 92 Seiten) kann HIER heruntergeladen werden.

It is highly recommended to read, understand, and implement the recommendations! They reflect the latest experiences and need in our highly interconnected electric power world!

Today I will focus on two issues: the first is discussed in the Whitepaper, the second is discussed in a paper from AXPRO in Switzerland.

The Whitepaper says on page 46 (bzw Seite 47 in der deutschen Version):

"In line with the given technical capabilities, standardised IEC protocols should be used across the board. The private range of these communication protocols should only be used where necessary for technological reasons. Without additional measures, the standard protocols IEC 60870-5-101/104 and IEC 61850 offer no secure integrity protection, authentication or encryption. In such cases, the available extensions according to IEC 62351 should be used. Potential limitations, e.g. in terms of performance and error diagnostics as well as the necessary key management infrastructure and processes should be considered.

For communication across zone boundaries, protocol breaks should be provided, e.g. through application layer gateways or by converting to a different protocol, to reduce potential vulnerabilities and weak points."

I fully agree with this last sentence. This brings me to the second issue: 

The Swiss utility AXPRO published a great paper with the title: OT-Security im Unterwerk  ... means in substations ... the paper is in English. You can download it HERE.

On page 3 you can find this:

Geräte diversifizieren

"Die klassischen Ansätze der Literatur geben einen Überblick über Lösungen. Dies beginnt bei gängigen Konzepten zur Ersatzteilhaltung und setzt sich bei der technischen Redundanz von Komponenten fort. Die zusätzlichen Komponenten halten den Betrieb bei einem Ausfall aufrecht – zumindest einen Minimalbetrieb. Die eingesetzten Geräte und Systeme können zudem mit unter-schiedlichen Komponenten diversifiziert werden, beispielsweise durch Geräte unterschiedlicher Hersteller, Gerätefamilien mit signifikanten Unterschieden sowie Kommunikationsvarianten. Eine einzelne Schwachstelle kann somit nie die Funktion des Gesamtsystems gefährden. Die Diversität stellt eine Hürde dar, die ein Angreifer überwinden muss. Allerdings muss auch beachtet und akzeptiert werden, dass durch eine grössere Diversität ein Mehraufwand für den Betrieb und somit zusätzliche Kosten entstehen."

They are obviously following the recommendation of the Whitepaper!! Thanks. The statement in the last sentence is important to understand: The implementation and application of many security measures needs peopleware and reasonable budgets!

I have discussed peopleware many times for years ... it seems to be more important than ever ... see also my latest discussion on people ...

Be aware: The most secure communication is the one that is not implemented or implemented but not in use!

Aktuell: Version 3.0 des Whitepapers "Anforderungen an sichere Steuerungs- und Telekommunikationssysteme"

"Der BDEW (Bundesverband der Energie- und Wasserwirtschaft) und seine österreichischen und schweizer Schwesterverbände (OE Oesterreichs Energie und VSE Verband Schweizerischer Elektrizitätsunternehmen) haben am 30.09.2024 eine vollständig überarbeitete Version 3.0 des Whitepapers "Anforderungen an sichere Steuerungs- und Telekommunikationssysteme" veröffentlicht. Das BDEW/OE/VSE-Whitepaper definiert grundlegende Sicherheitsanforderungen an Leit- und Automatisierungstechniksysteme der Energieversorgung und die zugehörige Nachrichten- und Telekommunikationstechnik."

Hier klicken, um zum Whitepaper zu gelangen.

Das Whitepaper ist ein gelungenes Anforderungspapier, das unbedingt beachtet werden sollte! Allerdings ist der Erfüllungsaufwand sehr hoch ... aber auch lohnend zu spendieren. 

Ich wünsche allen Beteiligten viel Erfolg!!

Are IEC 61850 based Systems Cyber-Secure?

Often you hear arguments that IEC 61850 based systems are not cyber-secure ... is that true?

The truth is: The standards series IEC 61850 refers to the standard series IEC 62351. Example:

Power Systems Management and Associated Information Exchange – Communication network and system security – Part 4: Profiles including MMS and derivatives

IEC 61850-8-1 (Mapping to MMS) requires to use TLS ... as defined in IEC 62351-6 !!

Click HERE to access the preview of IEC 61850-8-1 (referring to IEC 62351) and HERE for the preview of IEC 62351-6.

Another issue to protect your IEC 61850 based system is to monitor the traffic and compare it with the configured communication relations and contents:

Click HERE to watch a brief video from Omicron that shows some means to support cyber-security in IEC 61850 based systems. 

There is a lot of activities going on to increase the cyber-security in automation systems.

IEC Offers New Web Site for IEC 61850

IEC offers a new website to provide general information about the standard series IEC 61850, IEC 62351, IEC 61400-25, and other standards.

Click HERE to visit the new web site.

IEC TC 57 Just Published Additional Code Components for IEC 61850

IEC TC 57 has published five additional code components document as listed in the figure:

These documents are very helpful ... they provide the main parts of the corresponding information models.

Click HERE to see the full list of the 18 published code components.

New TC 57 CDVs For Public Comments Posted

IEC TC 57 has posted two new CDVs for public comments (for everybody to read the document for free):

57/2068/CDV
IEC 62351-3/AMD2 ED1: Amendment 2 - Power systems management and associated information exchange - Data and communications security -
Part 3: Communication network and system security - Profiles including TCP/IP 

57/2069/CDV (67 pages)
IEC 62351-8 ED1: Power systems management and associated information exchange - Data and communications security -
Part 8: Role-based access control 

This effort will transform the existing IEC TS 62351-8 ED1 from an IEC TS (Technical Specification) into an IS (International Standard) ED1

Excerpt from the Scope:

"The scope of this standard is to facilitate role-based access control (RBAC) for power system management. RBAC assigns human users, automated systems, and software applications (called “subjects” in this document) to specified “roles”, and restricts their access to only those resources, which the security policies identify as necessary for their roles.

As electric power systems become more automated and cyber security concerns become more prominent, it is becoming increasingly critical to ensure that access to data (read, write, control, etc.) is restricted. As in many aspects of security, RBAC is not just a technology; it is a way of running a business. RBAC is not a new concept; in fact, it is used by many operating systems to control access to system resources. Specifically, RBAC provides an alternative to the all-or-nothing super-user model in which all subjects have access to all data, including control commands. ..."

Be aware that RBAC is required in systems where multiple clients (in the sense of, e.g., IEC 61850) need to access a server. One use case is where multiple power market participants want to manage a power resource. 

IEC TS 62351-5 ED2 - Security for IEC 60870-5 and derivatives

IEC TC 57 just published a new proposal to revise TR IEC 62351-5 and convert it into a standard:

57/2000/DC

Proposed revision of IEC TS 62351-5 ED2 and transformation of the TS into an IS (Power systems management and associated information exchange - Data and communications security - Part 5: Security for IEC 60870-5 and derivatives)

Excerpt from the background:

"... Since IEC TS 62351-5 was first published, IEC 60870-5-7 has been published defining specific security requirements for IEC 60870-5 protocols based on IEC TS 62351-5, while similar specific security requirements have been defined for IEEE Std. 1815 (DNP3). In addition, implementations have been undertaken by vendors. As a result, some issues with IEC TS 62351-5 were identified. At the same time, the security requirements for IEC 60870-5 have matured since these specifications were released as a Technical Specification. At this time, it is important to update these security requirements and convert them into an International Standard in order to ensure that implementations of IEC 60870-5 can include the appropriate security measures. ..."

Comments are expected by 2018-07-20 at the latest.

FMTP, NettedAutomation and other Experts Offer New Training Courses for Power System Automation, Protection, Smart Grid, and Security

FMTP Power AB (Uppsala, Sweden), KTH (Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm), Håvard Storås (Security expert), and NettedAutomation GmbH (Karlsruhe, Germany) have each long-term experience in the application of standards for protection and control as well in secure communication and SCADA applications.
FMTP and NettedAutomation in coopration with other senior experts offer the most comprehensive and vendor-independent education and practical training courses – they combine their knowledge and practical experience in the following areas:

1. Substation control and protection, system design, engineering, and testing
   (Mr Andrea Bonetti who worked for ABB, Megger, and STRI),
2. Smart Grid (Mr Lars Nordström, Director and Professor at KTH – Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm), 
3. IT, OT & Cyber Security
   (Expert Mr Håvard Storås) and 
4. Communication technology and SCADA ... market penetration and solutions(Mr Karlheinz Schwarz who worked for Siemens in the 80s and 90s):

We offer the following comprehensive training options:

Stockholm/Sweden
(English: Andrea Bonetti, Prof. Lars Nordström, Håvard Storås, and Karlheinz Schwarz): 

12-16 March 2018 (book 3, 4 or 5 days)

Click HERE for details

Karlsruhe/Germany
(English: Andrea Bonetti, Håvard Storås, and Karlheinz Schwarz):

23-27 April 2018 (book 3, 4 or 5 days)

Click HERE for details

Karlsruhe
(Deutsch: Karlheinz Schwarz):

14-17 Mai 2018
04-07 Dezember 2018

HIER für Details in Deutsch klicken.

How many employees will drive an electric vehicle?

A German manager recently said that 500 employees of his company drive by car to the company every workday. He expects that in the future 250 will use electric cars and will charge their cars within the first hour after they arrived. The company would need 10 times more power than today!
Ok! Hm!?
What do you think about these assumptions? 250 EVs charging in the first hour!?
As an engineer I am wondering that experts come up with such examples. First of all, I do not expect that 50 per cent of the car owners will buy an electric car in the next years. Even if they would do, why do 250 car drivers want to charge at the companies car park in the morning when they arrive?
He concludes that "we engineers have not yet thought through to the end".
I guess a lot of engineers have thought through to the end - but not many engineers or politicians are listening!

Click HERE for the report "Netzstabilität braucht Digitalisierung und Automatisierung" in the vdi nachrichten (German).

These discussions remind me of the situation in the early 80s when we had the discussion on CSMA/CD (Ethernet, IEEE 802.3) versus Token Passing (IEEE 802.4). Under the assumption that we have a shower of messages to be sent by all attached devices at the same time, we found that Ethernet could not efficiently manage the communication due to many collisions. Token Passing was understood to manage such a situation very well. Ok.
Another assumption, high load from one device only, could easily be managed by CSMA/CD - but Token Passing would end up in very low throughput ... many other assumptions could be made.
So, what is the realistic assumption for communication? Nobody knows - it all depends.
Finally Switched Ethernet (a major new development) solved the collision problem ... and Token Passing more or less became obsolete in the automation world.

In the energy domain we need first to find the future new mix of power generation and how to store, transmit, distribute, and use the power - then we can think about automation and communication. The most crucial issue may be: Who is paying for all the changes?

By the way: We (many engineers) know how to communicate: IEC 61850 is one of the most crucial solution ... and how (not yet what) to automate.

IEC 61850 Training in Deutsch mit Jubiläumsrabatt

An alle an IEC 61850 Interessierten,
NettedAutomation bietet das viertägige IEC 61850 Intensiv-Training
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Port Scanning in a Substation - May be a No-Go

Security is more than a buzzword these days. You should be very serious about the security of your substation protection and automation system.
Joe Weiss asked yesterday:
Are the Good Guys as Dangerous as the Bad Guys – an Almost Catastrophic Failure of the Transmission Grid
What happened? A port scanning tool in an IEC 61850 GOOSE based substation protection system had a very negative impact on the GOOSE publisher and subscriber: The Relays stopped to operate!! They had to be manually rebooted.
Port scanning may provide a lot (too much) of stress to the devices and communication system. Such a crucial load has to be taken into account during the design of the devices and of the whole system. Theoretically this payload should be taken into account as part of the system engineering ... part of the System Configuration Description (SCD). Any unexpected traffic avalanche may have a serious impact on the stability of the system!
Click HERE for Joe's report.

I guess that the GridEx network monitor would have raised the red flag seeing the message avalanche in the transmission substation.

Lesson to be learned:
Any non-operational load on a critical network should be treated very careful. IT and OT people have to work together and make sure that such test tools do not put too much stress onto the devices connected in a substation or any other system:
Teamwork makes the dream work - and keeps the power flowing!

Click HERE for a discussion of port scanning ... written long time ago (2001 !!)
Click HERE for a worth to read report on how to apply IEC 62443.

My friend Andrea Bonetti (FMTP) responded as follows:

Dear Karlheinz!
What you have described is unfortunately a known problem.
It is really not at all the first time that it happens in the last 10 years, but it is maybe the first time that it is presented to the public.
I would like to stress-out that this problem is NOT related to IEC 61850 but it is related to the correct usage of digital technology.
Similar situations happened also “before” when proprietary digital technology was used. Maybe they were just more difficult to disclose because also the tools were proprietary.
Regarding GridEx, it would have detected the loss of communication among the devices, as it performs the supervision of the GOOSE messages. This would have been written in its report.
GridEx performs also network load calculations, but in the case you have described this would not have helped probably. Anyway that information would also have been written in the report.
Let me point out that GridEx is an “IEC 61850 passive tool”.
GridEx does not talk to any device, does not send any IEC 61850 message…. it can only listen to what happens, without interacting with the system.
Also the time synchronization of GridEx can be performed completely independently from the system, with its own independent GPS receiver accessory.
Also GridEx works without a PC, so you do not connect the PC to the substation network system.
As GridEx doesn’t interact to the system where it is connected to, it cannot cause any damage and it can be connected to the network while the system is in service.

Draft TR IEC 62351-90-2: Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) of Encrypted Communication

IEC TC 57 just published the document 57/1939/DTR:

Power systems management and associated information exchange –
Data and communications security –
IEC TR 62351-90-2: Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) of encrypted communications

This technical report analyses the impact of encrypted communication channels in power systems introduced with IEC 62351. As defined in IEC 62351 an encrypted channel can be employed when communicating with IEDs and encryption can be adopted at message level as well. For example, the use of encrypting TLS setups according to IEC 62351-3 introduces some issues when Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) is needed to inspect the communication channel for monitoring, auditing and validation needs.
In this report we analyze different techniques that can be employed to circumvent this issues when DPI of communications is required.

The voting closes 2017-12-22

IEC TC 57 published Two Documents Related to Security Measures (IEC 62351)

IEC TC 57 just published the following two documents:

57/1928/NP
IEC 62351-100-3: Conformance test cases for the IEC 62351-3, the secure communication extension for profiles including TCP/IP

The scope is to specify common available procedures and definitions for conformance and/or interoperability testing of the requirements of IEC 62351-3, the security extension for profiles including TCP/IP.

57/1931/DC
Proposed revision of IEC TS 62351-6 ED1 and conversion into an International Standard (Power systems management and associated information exchange - Data and communications security - Part 6: Security for IEC 61850)

Both documents indicate that the security measures defined by the series IEC 62351 are becoming more important! Hope that more experts in the power delivery domain will understand the impact!

Are Devices Using IEC 61850 Vulnerable?

Devices that implement IEC 61850 may be vulnerable - depending on the measures (not) implemented to protect your SYSTEM! There are many layers of security that can be build into the system to make is less vulnerable. IEC 61850 needs special security measures to hide the semantics of the information being exchanged in a system.

IEC 61850 has well defined models for controlling switch gears: Logical Node CSWI.Pos for operating any kind of switchgears liek circuit breaker, dis-connector or earthing switches. If a client (SCADA, RTU, Proxy, ...) has "open" access to an IED, it could use the self-description and figure out which CSWI instances are available ... and could try to use MMS Write to open or close a switch gear. In a bad system design, this may work.

A high level of security would not (easily) allow other clients (except those that are designed to operate) to operate a switch gear.

Security measures have to be implemented to prevent misuse of the self-description. Even without the self-description, it may be possible that somebody gets access to the SCL file of the system to "read" the models from an XML file. As a consequence: XML files need to be secured as well ...!

You will find solutions for many of the known security problems in the standard series IEC 62351!

The definitions have to be implemented - the paper standards do not protect your systems!

A very new, comprehensive and up-to-date report on security has been published the other day:

THREAT INTELLIGENCE REPORT
CYBERATTACKS AGAINST
UKRAINIAN ICS

Click HERE for the report [pdf, 20 pages].

By the way, the report mentions IEC 60870-5-101/104, IEC 61850 and OPC UA.
Worth to read.

Smart Cars Under Attack- What Does it Mean for Power Systems?

We are quite often looking for smart things: cars, phones, power grids, ... expecting they make life easier or more comfortable. May be ... or may not be.
We have to understand and take into account that most of these smart things are under enormous pressure to become hacked.
Researchers have reported that "Smart car makers are faced with a potentially lethal hack that cannot be fixed with a conventional software security update. The hack is believed to affect all smart cars and could enable an attacker to turn off safety features, such as airbags, ABS brakes and power-steering or any of a vehicle’s computerised components connected to its controller area network (Can) bus. ... The hack is “currently indefensible by modern car security technology, and to completely resolve it would require broad, sweeping changes in standards and the ways in-vehicle
networks and devices are made,”"
Click HERE for the full report on computerweekly.
Click HERE for another detailed report also worth to read and FOLLOW.

Hm, that is no good news!

I hope that the power industry is using appropriate (security) standards to dramatically reduce the risk to hack devices used in power automation systems. One of them is IEC 62351. There are many other measures discussed on this block, e.g., the German BDEW Whitebook.
How many more wake-up calls do we need to change our ways how to secure energy delivery services? The more devices are brought into operation the more we need to care about security.

A lethal position of the management would be: "It could not happen to our systems - they are all safe. Really?

In the first years of open systems interconnection (OSI) ... early 1980s, I was quite unhappy with the Ethernet CSMA/CD method and the token bus solution. As a young engineer at Siemens here in Karlsruhe, I spent many hours and days of my free time (at home) to figure out how to improve the CSMA/CD to make the access deterministic - yes I found a solution! My colleagues and the management was supporting Tokenbus only ;-)

So, my patent was not used by Siemens ... but later I figured out that the CAN bus used the same algorithm I developed for my patent.

At that time almost nobody was expecting that years later people would intentionally hack media access protocols!! I remember one person complaining about OSI in the early 80s. He said (in German): "Wer offene Systeme haben will, der ist nicht ganz dicht!" This is not easily to be translated in English - I will try. "Offene Systeme" is "Open Systems". "Dicht" means "close" - and if someone is "nicht dicht" means: you are crazy. So: "If you want to have Open Systems - you must be crazy."

Click HERE to have a look at my patent (EP0110015).

I am really wondering that the old and for long time used protocols like CAN make that lethal trouble 30 years later! What will be next?

By the way, any Ethernet multicast shower in a subnetwork has the potential to crash a "smart" device. If the Ethernet controller has to filter out too many multicast messages it may stop to work.

Resume: Any system needs to be carefully designed, engineered and configured. Do you want to have a problem? No Problem!

The industry has to learn that a lot of changes in the way we automate today has to come!! That requires SMART People - and a lot more resources ... the costs of our living will definitely increase.

I question, if we have really made a lot of progress since the early 80s. Open Sytsems are too "open" ... we have to find ways to close the points where hacker could tap and "re-use" the messages in order to stop talking.

Draft of First Amendment to IEC 62351-3 (power system security) Published

Draft IEC 62351-3/AMD1 ED1 (57/1894/CDV)
Amendment 1 – Power systems management and associated information exchange – Data and communications security – Part 3: Communication network and system security – Profiles including TCP/IP
The crucial amendment has been prepared by IEC TC57 Working Group 15 in order to address the following:

1. Definition of additional security warnings for TLS versions 1.1 and 1.0
2. Alignment of handling of revoked or expired certificates for TLS session resumption and TLS session renegotiation
3. Clarification regarding session resumption and session renegotiation invocation based on session time.
4. Enhancement of session resumption approach with the option of session tickets to better align with the upcoming new version of TLS
5. Enhancement of the utilized public key methods for signing and key management with ECDSA based algorithms
6. Update of the requirements for referencing standards
7. Update of bibliograph

The CDV ballot ends 2017-11-03

Drei IEC-61850-Hands-On-Trainingskurse in Deutsch in Karlsruhe (2017 und 2018)

Die NettedAutomation GmbH (Karlsruhe) bietet drei Termine für das aktuelle IEC61850-Hands-On-Training in Karlsruhe an:
05.-08. Dezember 2017 
14.-17. Mai 2018
04.-07. Dezember 2018

Diese unschlagbar günstigen Trainingskurse vermitteln über 30 Jahre Erfahrungen mit Informationsaustausch-Systemen basierend auf internationalen Normenreihen wir IEC 61850 (allgemeine Anwendungen in der Energietechnik, Schaltanlagen, Transport- und Verteilnetze, Wasserkraft, Kraft-Wärmekopplung, Speicher, ...), IEC 61400-25 (Wind), IEC 60870-5-10x (traditionelle Fernwirktechnik), IEC 61158 (Feldbus), IEC 62351 (Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik) und vielen anderen.

Planen Sie schon heute das entsprechende Budget für das Jahr 2018!

Clicken Sie HIER für Inhalte, Preise und Anmeldeinformationen.

Analysis Of The Malware Reportedly Used in the December 2016 Ukrainian Power System Attack

Senior experts of SANS ICS and E-ISAC have released a very good report:

ICS Defense Use Case No. 6:
Modular ICS Malware
August 2, 2017

This document contains a summary of information compiled from multiple publicly available sources, as well as analysis performed by the SANS Industrial Control Systems (ICS) team in relation to this event. Elements of the event provide an important learning opportunity for ICS defenders.

The sharing of this report is very much appreciated. It is very rare to get such a professional publicly available analysis about a significant and terrifying event in the control system world.

The report closes with this very important statement:

Defenders must take this opportunity to conduct operational and engineering discussions as suggested in this DUC and enhance their capabilities to gain visibility in to their ICS networks and hosts. The community must learn as much as it can from real world incidents and not delay; we expect adversaries to mature their tools and enhance them with additional capabilities.

I recommend you to study this document and get trained by the real experts - for the good of your country! Don't accept the decision of your HR ... not providing you the budget for training. Quite often HR managers believe that our systems are secure - no need for training on security, communication standards, etc.

Click HERE for the full report.

By the way, the SCADASEC blog (as a crucial platform for ICS defenders and other people) is a nice place to visit, discuss and learn issues related to the topics discussed in the paper.

Data and Communications Security: IEC TC 57 Just Published IEC 62351-7

IEC TC 57 just published IEC 62351-7:2017:
Power systems management and associated information exchange - Data and communications security - Part 7: Network and System Management (NSM) data object models

IEC 62351-7:2017 defines network and system management (NSM) data object models that are specific to power system operations. These NSM data objects will be used to monitor the health of networks and systems, to detect possible security intrusions, and to manage the performance and reliability of the information infrastructure. The goal is to define a set of abstract objects that will allow the remote monitoring of the health and condition of IEDs (Intelligent Electronic Devices), RTUs (Remote Terminal Units), DERs (Distributed Energy Resources) systems and other systems that are important to power system operations. This new edition constitutes a technical revision and includes the following significant technical changes with respect to IEC TS 62351-7 (2010): NSM object data model reviewed and enriched; UML model adopted for NSM objects description; SNMP protocol MIBs translation included as Code Components.
The Code Components included in this IEC standard are also available as electronic machine readable file.
Click HERE for the Preview.
Click HERE for the Code Components.
The standard series IEC 61850 will also come with Code Components when the various 7-x parts will be published as International Standard. This will ease the development and maintenance of engineering and configuration tools ... tremendously.
Check HERE for Code Components ... coming later in 2017 or 2018 ...

How Much Will The Implementation Of Security Measures Cost?

Almost everybody is talking about security measures in the context of automation and communication systems in factories, power plants, substations, hospitals, ... Talking about the topic is one thing - what's about implementing and sustainable use of secure systems? Hm, a good question.
A news report published on June 13, 2017, under the title
"The “Internet of Things” is way more vulnerable
than you think—and not just to hackers
points out that many - maybe most - devices that communicate using internet technologies are not capable to carry the load needed for reasonable security measures. One paragraph referring to Joe Weiss (a well known expert) is eye-catching:
"Weiss believes that the first step in securing the IoT is to build entirely new devices with faster processors and more memory. In essence, hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of machines need to be replaced or upgraded significantly."

Click HERE to read the complete report.

I would like to see - at least - more powerful platforms when it comes to new installations. Be aware that the cost of a new platform with implemented state-of-the-art security measures is one thing. Another thing is to implement a more centralized security infrastructures to manage the security.
IEC 62351-9 specifies cryptographic key management, namely how to generate, distribute, revoke, and handle X.509 digital certificates and cryptographic keys to protect digital data and its communication.
Primary goals of the series IEC 62351 are considered for the use of cryptography:

• Verifying the claimed identity of a message sender (authentication);
• Verifying that the sender has the right to access the requested data (authorization);
• Ensuring no one has tampered with a message during transit (integrity);
• Obscuring the contents of a message from unintended recipients (confidentiality);
• Associating specific actions with the entity that performed them (non-repudiation).

It is recommended for vendors and users to pay more attention to IEC 62351 (and other standards) and to listen carefully to the experts involved in protecting our infrastructures.
A reasonable white paper on the matter has been published by the BDEW (Germany): "Requirements for Secure Control and Telecommunication Systems".
Click HERE to access the BDEW white paper.
Click HERE for further information (some documents are in English).
Click HERE for a paper discussing the BDEW white paper.