Tool-assisted Threat Modeling for Smart Grid Cyber Security

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.