Tool-assisted Threat Modeling for Smart Grid Cyber Security

Abstract

Threat modeling is about identifying architectural flaws and weaknesses in a system in order to mitigate them and avoid unwanted incidents caused by an attacker. Tool assisted threat modeling has seen limited use in complex cyber physical systems involving both Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) systems. In this paper, we investigate the applicability of tool-assisted threat modeling to the complex cyber-physical system that is the smart grid, and present a new Smart Grid template for the Microsoft Threat Modeling Tool. We demonstrate benefits of our smart grid threat modeling template on a use-case, and discuss limitations.