SCE was faced with a daunting problem in 2006: how to secure a system that had never been built before and was yet to be entirely defined. The Edison SmartConnect™ project was the beginning of an ambitious endeavor to transform the utility into the next generation of electric power service providers and implement what some were starting to call the “smart grid.” Yet no previous work on this problem existed and the utility had no markers to point the way. This paper presents a broad examination of the process SCE has developed to solve complex security engineering issues as it transitions to the Smart Grid. This approach has shown tremendous benefits to the utility in terms of work/product reuse, traceability and defensibility of actions, and mitigation of security and technology risks. Further, the approach provides tangible and provable assurances through quantification of unknowns and elimination of guesswork.

Mar 4, 2009