CRaaS: Cloud-based Smart Grid Cyber Range for Scalable Cybersecurity Experiments and Training

Smart grid systems, along with other modernized critical infrastructures, have been targeted by cyber attackers in recent years, which has surged the demand for research and development of cybersecurity technologies to defend them as well as for training of cybersecurity experts. Cyber range, which is a virtual environment imitating the configuration and behaviours of real system infrastructure, is a solution to address them. While there are multiple efforts devoted to develop a cyber range of smart grid systems, we still face challenges in terms of configurability, accessibility, scalability, reproducibility, and initial/operational cost. In this paper, we propose smart grid CRaaS (Cyber range as a service), which facilitates instantiation and usage of smart grid cyber range on an OpenStack cloud platform to address these challenges. To demonstrate the feasibility, we conduct implementation study of a functional prototype on National Cybersecurity Research and Development Lab in Singapore.