Cybersecurity for transformers

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Mr. Feyrer, what is cybersecurity?

IT secu­ri­ty, infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty, pro­tec­tion of data and infor­ma­tion, avail­abil­i­ty, con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, integri­ty – this is ini­tial­ly very abstract. In con­crete terms, it can be bro­ken down into con­trol secu­ri­ty and pro­tec­tion goals which means that our sys­tems must be ready and avail­able for their intend­ed pur­pose. Errors in the form of fail­ures are easy to detect but these should be avoid­ed at all costs by tak­ing mea­sures in advance.

In terms of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, the pro­tec­tion goals of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and integri­ty – that data must not be acces­si­ble to unau­tho­rized per­sons and must there­fore be con­fi­den­tial – are more dif­fi­cult to rec­og­nize, but just as impor­tant. If unau­tho­rized changes take place, then the data can no longer be relied upon. Here, too, appro­pri­ate pre­cau­tions must be tak­en in advance, but also, if pos­si­ble, rec­og­nized and avert­ed dur­ing oper­a­tion.

Why is high cybersecurity important for transformers?

Trans­form­ers con­sist of many indi­vid­ual com­po­nents. The trend is toward more remote con­trol, and thus more net­work­ing, and thus in turn more attack sur­face that must be secured. In dis­tant regions, remote mon­i­tor­ing is faster, eas­i­er and more effec­tive than send­ing a tech­ni­cian on site.

But this requires secur­ing access points and func­tions against unau­tho­rized use, as well as detect­ing and defend­ing against tech­ni­cal attacks. With all things dig­i­tal, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty pro­tec­tion goals are impor­tant to ensure expect­ed func­tions. And, of course, for con­trol func­tions it is impor­tant to ensure that input val­ues and oper­at­ing para­me­ters are with­in the defined ranges and that devi­a­tions are detect­ed – regard­less of whether they result from errors in oper­a­tion or delib­er­ate manip­u­la­tion.

What does cybersecurity look like in product development?

There are three major areas for pro­tect­ing machines from humans, whether through error or tam­per­ing: pre­ven­tion, detec­tion, response. This means that poten­tial risks are already iden­ti­fied dur­ing the design stage – secu­ri­ty by design – which are then avoid­ed with suit­able mea­sures dur­ing devel­op­ment, pro­gram­ming and pro­duc­tion.

But the life of our prod­ucts only begins at the end of pro­duc­tion, and new vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties must also be iden­ti­fied dur­ing use by cus­tomers, and any result­ing risks must be assessed. If our cus­tomers’ own risks increase in their envi­ron­ment as a result, it is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to inform them of this and pro­vide secu­ri­ty updates for our prod­ucts accord­ing­ly. This is where the proac­tive pre­ven­tion of risks in devel­op­ment inter­twines with the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of appro­pri­ate respons­es in use by cus­tomers and in our prod­uct main­te­nance.

Internation­al stan­dards such as ISO 27001 and IEC 62443 pro­vide pro­ce­dur­al mod­els for this which com­prise plan­ning, imple­men­ta­tion, review and con­tin­u­ous improve­ment. And so that you don’t have to start from scratch, there is an exten­sive cat­a­log of top­ics that include pos­si­ble risks and how to deal with them across depart­ments. Every­thing must fit so that the chain does not break at its weak­est link.

How well positioned is MR in terms of cybersecurity?

An infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty man­age­ment sys­tem (ISMS) is cur­rent­ly being set up with a focus on ETOS® and the deliv­ery of ETOS® soft­ware updates through our MR cus­tomer por­tal. Along with the devel­op­ers, all sup­port­ing depart­ments are also involved: from IT to HR and from pur­chas­ing to the legal depart­ment. In the project, the cur­rent sta­tus is being checked by com­par­i­son with a cat­a­log of mea­sures spec­i­fied by ISO 27001, and risks are being iden­ti­fied and mea­sures derived.

Digitalization of power transformers — what challenges and risks does this pose for customers?

Here is an exam­ple: An ETOS® is con­nect­ed to TESSA®, the MR asset man­age­ment plat­form. The nec­es­sary encryp­tion infra­struc­ture is devel­oped and coor­di­nat­ed with the depart­ments respon­si­ble for the two MR prod­ucts at the ends of the con­nec­tion. Secu­ri­ty in devel­op­ment also includes per­form­ing inde­pen­dent checks in the form of pen­e­tra­tion tests and inde­pen­dent audits before deliv­ery to cus­tomers. And of course, our prod­ucts are also mon­i­tored after deliv­ery to iden­ti­fy new­ly dis­cov­ered vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties ear­ly on and enable their reme­di­a­tion through soft­ware updates in the MR cus­tomer por­tal.

What does the future hold?

In addi­tion to all these tech­ni­cal and orga­ni­za­tion­al issues, there are many legal devel­op­ments, as leg­is­la­tors have also rec­og­nized the impor­tance of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty. One exam­ple of this is the upcom­ing Cyber Resilience Act which will set EU-wide spec­i­fi­ca­tions for prod­ucts with dig­i­tal ele­ments. Thanks to our prepara­to­ry work and many years of expe­ri­ence, we are well pre­pared here to be able to offer legal­ly and tech­ni­cal­ly secure prod­ucts to the mar­ket. Of course, we remain con­stant­ly on our toes, mon­i­tor­ing cur­rent devel­op­ments, adapt­ing our process­es and train­ing all our devel­op­ers. Because cyber­se­cu­ri­ty is a team sport that we must mas­ter togeth­er through com­mit­ment and exper­tise in order to offer our cus­tomers secure prod­ucts and ser­vices today and in the future.