Page 239 - Artificial Intelligence for the Internet of Everything

220 Artificial Intelligence for the Internet of Everything

and associated vendors, distributers, integrators, and end users. Grid mod-
ernization has increased the use of smart energy devices that network, dig-
itize, automate, and increasing converge the cyber-physical energy supply
chain. This has resulted in new cyber supply chain security and North
American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) critical infrastructure
protection (CIP) compliance challenges for utilities, regulators, and vendors.
The distributed form of a blockchain ledger complements the distributed
function of a global energy infrastructure supply chain. The power grid
weaves together cyber and physical cyber assets, information and operational
technology, and software and hardware in a way that requires an improved
chain of custody for monitoring, auditing, and cyber security. Permissioned
blockchain technology provides a consensus mechanism and trust anchor via
a cryptographic hash function that helps verify the who, what, when, and
where of the data in a blockchain where the data exchange or event becomes
a widely witnessed, auditable, and immutable event. This technology pre-
sents a number of potential opportunities to increase the cyber security of a
supply chain, which is essential to secure and sustain DAEO.
For one, blockchain facilitates the auditability of IoT environments,
tracking inventory of energy organization’s critical cyber assets, such as
where a device was developed, shipped, installed, and last patched. Cur-
rently, these disparate data sets are often not tracked or monitored by energy
utilities, creating an opportunity for malicious actors to exploit this knowl-
edge gap in the chain of custody. Similarly, energy utilities often do not have
visibility into the health of their critical field and edge devices. If an energy
utility does not have an inventory and monitor these critical cyber assets, it is
almost impossible to detect, protect, and respond to malicious cyber events.
Blockchain, or distributed ledger technology (DLT), has many defini-
tions. For this chapter, blockchain is defined as a distributed database or dig-
ital ledger that records transactions of value using a cryptographic signature
that is inherently resistant to modification (Tapscott, 2016). Blockchain is a
distributed database that maintains a continuously growing list of records,
called blocks, secure from tampering and revision. Each block contains a
timestamp and a link to a previous block (Trottier, 2013). Blockchain-based
smart contracts can be executed without human interaction (Franco, 2014);
its data is more resistant to modification because the data that form a block
cannot be altered retroactively. Blockchain smart contracts are defined as
technologies or applications that are executed on participating nodes to
maintain consensus related to any exchanges of value that have occurred
without intermediaries acting as arbiters of money and information
(Tapscott, 2016). With those fundamentals defined, blockchains can be