Engineering Commons^™

Data Analytics And Machine Learning To Enhance The Operational Visibility And Situation Awareness Of Smart Grid High Penetration Photovoltaic Systems, Aditya Sundararajan

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Electric utilities have limited operational visibility and situation awareness over grid-tied distributed photovoltaic systems (PV). This will pose a risk to grid stability when the PV penetration into a given feeder exceeds 60% of its peak or minimum daytime load. Third-party service providers offer only real-time monitoring but not accurate insights into system performance and prediction of productions. PV systems also increase the attack surface of distribution networks since they are not under the direct supervision and control of the utility security analysts.

Six key objectives were successfully achieved to enhance PV operational visibility and situation awareness: (1) conceptual cybersecurity …

A Privacy Framework For Decentralized Applications Using Blockchains And Zero Knowledge Proofs, David Gabay

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the increasing interest in connected vehicles along with electrification opportunities, there is an ongoing effort to automate the charging process of electric vehicles (EVs) through their capabilities to communicate with the infrastructure and each other. However, charging EVs takes time and thus in-advance scheduling is needed. As this process is done frequently due to limited mileage of EVs, it may expose the locations and charging pattern of the EV to the service providers, raising privacy concerns for their users. Nevertheless, the EV still needs to be authenticated to charging providers, which means some information will need to be provided …

A Hardware-Assisted Insider Threat Detection And Prevention Framework, Kyle W. Denney

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Today, the USB protocol is among the most widely used protocols. However, the mass-proliferation of USB has led to a threat vector wherein USB devices are assumed innocent, leaving computers open to an attack. Malicious USB devices can disguise themselves as benign devices to insert malicious commands to connected end devices. A rogue device appears benign to the average OS, requiring advanced detection schemes to identify malicious devices. However, using system-level hooks, advanced threats may subvert OS-reliant detection schemes. This thesis showcases USB-Watch, a hardware-based USB threat detection framework. The hardware can collect live USB traffic before the data can …