Power systems operations are increasingly reliant on information infrastructures, including communication networks, intelligent electronic devices (IEDs), and self-defining communication protocols. Therefore, management of the information infrastructure has become crucial to providing the necessary high levels of security and reliability in power system operations. Using the concepts developed in the IETF simple network management protocol (SNMP) standards for network management, IEC/TS 62351-7 defines network and system management (NSM) data object models that are specific to power system operations. These NSM data objects will be used to monitor the health of networks and systems, to detect possible security intrusions, and to manage the performance and reliability of the information infrastructure.
The NSM data objects use the naming conventions developed for IEC 61850, expanded to address NSM issues. These data objects, and the data types of which they are comprised, are defined as abstract models of data objects. The actual bits-and-bytes formats of the data objects will depend upon the mapping of these abstract NSM data objects to specific protocols, such as IEC 61850, IEC 60870-5, IEC 60870-6, IEC 61968/IEC 61970 (CIM), web services, SNMP or any other appropriate protocol. Those mappings will need to be standardized in separate documents.