Past Seminars and Events 2016

Abstract:

The vision for a modernized "Smart Grid" involves the use of an advanced computing, communication and control cyber infrastructure for enhancing current grid operations by enabling timely interactions among a range of entities. The coupling between the power grid and its cyber infrastructure is inherent, and the extent to which the Smart Grid vision can be achieved depends upon the functionality and robustness of the cyber infrastructure. This talk describes some of the research results from the DOE- and DHS-funded Trustworthy Cyber Infrastructure for the Power Grid (TCIPG) Center which is aimed at ensuring that the power grid cyber infrastructure is protected both from accidental failures and malicious attacks from adversaries ranging from casual hackers to nation states. The goal of TCIPG was to provide resilience in the nation¹s electric grid cyber infrastructure such that it continues to deliver electricity and maintain critical operations even in the presence of cyber attacks. Achieving this goal will involve the extension, integration, design, and development of IT technologies imbibed with key properties of real-time availability, integrity, authentication and confidentiality.

Biography:

William H. Sanders is a Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Engineering and the Head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ece.illinois.edu) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Affiliate Professor in the Department of Computer Science. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, the ACM, and the AAAS; a past Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Fault Tolerant Computing; and past Vice-Chair of the IFIP Working Group 10.4 on Dependable Computing. He was the founding Director of the Information Trust Institute (iti.illinois.edu) at Illinois (2004-2011), and served as Director of the Coordinated Science Laboratory (csl.illinois.edu) at Illinois from 2010 to 2014. Sanders's research interests include secure and dependable computing and security and dependability metrics and evaluation, with a focus on critical infrastructures. He has published more than 200 technical papers in those areas. He was the Director and PI of the DOE/DHS Trustworthy Cyber Infrastructure for the Power Grid (TCIPG) Center (tcipg.org).

He is also co-developer of three tools for assessing computer-based systems: METASAN, UltraSAN, and Möbius. Möbius and UltraSAN have been distributed widely to industry and academia; more than 1,400 licenses for the tools have been issued to universities, companies, and NASA for evaluating the performance, dependability, and security of a variety of systems. He is also a co-developer of the NP-View tool (network-perception.com) for assessing the security of networked systems.