Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are fundamental to the operation, monitoring, and automation of critical infrastructure in sectors such as energy, water utilities, manufacturing, transportation, and oil and gas. According to the Purdue Model, ICS encompasses tightly coupled OT and IT layers, becoming increasingly interconnected. Smart grids represent a critical class of ICS; thus, this survey examines encryption and relevant protocols in smart grid communications, with findings extendable to other ICS. Encryption techniques implemented at both the protocol and network layers are among the most effective cybersecurity strategies for protecting communications in increasingly interconnected ICS environments. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of encryption practices within the smart grid as the primary ICS application domain, focusing on protocol-level solutions (e.g., DNP3, IEC 60870-5-104, IEC 61850, ICCP/TASE.2, Modbus, OPC UA, and MQTT) and network-level mechanisms (e.g., VPNs, IPsec, and MACsec). We evaluate these technologies in terms of security, performance, and deployability in legacy and heterogeneous systems that include renewable energy resources. Key implementation challenges are explored, including real-time operational constraints, cryptographic key management, interoperability across platforms, and alignment with NERC CIP, IEC 62351, and IEC 62443. The survey highlights emerging trends such as lightweight Transport Layer Security (TLS) for constrained devices, post-quantum cryptography, and Zero Trust architectures. Our goal is to provide a practical resource for building resilient smart grid security frameworks, with takeaways that generalize to other ICS.
Narayanan et al. (Sun,) studied this question.
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