Implementation of IPSec in substation gateways

Cyber security in interconnected smart grid is vital for reliability of power system operations. Power communication applications are different from cooperate information technology applications. Utilities that follow defense in depth strategy have to confront many network security technologies. This paper presents an application of IPSec tunnel in substation gateways. IPSec Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) tunnels are selected for our experiments. Since security overhead of cyber security measures introduce additional delays, several performance tests are conducted on IPSec ESP tunnels. The results are used to determine the balance between security and performance of IPSec ESP tunnel on substation gateways.