Evaluation of Home Energy Management System (HEMS) Using State of the Art Info Security Frameworks

Abstract

In the modern world, cybersecurity poses an enduring challenge for the IT sector, with organizations investing heavily in securing their assets, especially consumer personal data. Unfortunately, the past decade has seen a significant increase in cyber-attacks against IT setups. Main target of such attacks is to get access to the data owned by organizations. Such incidents have necessitated the establishment of cyber security controls and their assessments in an organization. This has made it essential for organizations to establish and assess cybersecurity controls. Numerous renowned institutes have developed frameworks to address cybersecurity issues. While some frameworks address overall security issues, others target significant threats to an organization's security, helping organizations achieve confidentiality, integrity, and availability of their assets. Risk management, as a subset of cybersecurity, is the most crucial stage in implementing cybersecurity in any organization, encompassing security controls' employment, selection, implementation, and defining mitigations. This project report presents the design and evaluation of various cyber security frameworks on an IT environment developed for Home Energy Management System (HEMS) that utilizes a local network to monitor and control energy usage. In addition to providing energy efficiency, the system also addresses cybersecurity concerns by assessing the applicability of different cybersecurity compliance standards, including NIST, CIS-20 and ISO. The report outlines the architecture of the system, including the hardware and software components, and provides an analysis of the system's performance.