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The communications infrastructure of the electric grid has been evolving rapidly in the last decades due to the need for transporting ever more sophisticated information, both data and control. More recently Ethernet based networks have been added into the picture, as modern relays need to communicate with control and dispatch centers and centralized management systems over local and wide area networks. Notably, the need to support IEC 61850 standards encouraged relay vendors into speeding up the development of Ethernet as a preferred method of communication.The benefits of Ethernet networking are huge. Flexibility and easy deployment are only two of them. However Ethernet networking comes with features that protection engineers need to be aware of, if they wish to take full advantage of its capabilities. It also comes with new challenges that protection engineers need to be aware of. Network latency and availability must be carefully considered for. Cybersecurity must be planned, the risk of cyberattacks evaluated and protection measures implemented. This paper explores the network architecture of the modern protection and control (P&C) systems including protective relays themselves. It discusses aspects such as the use and benefits of routing, the need and solutions for maximum availability and real time response, as well as security measures that can be taken to reduce the risk of cyberattacks inherent when connecting over Ethernet. The paper also highlights some of the best practices when using Ethernet networking in the grid, providing examples drawn from the protective relaying and cybersecurity practice. It offers simple solutions to typical security challenges possibly encountered during the commissioning phase and in the daily operations of relay devices.

Software security is a component of software development that should be integrated throughout its entire development lifecycle, and not simply as an afterthought. If security vulnerabilities are caught early in development, they can be fixed before the software is released in production environments. Furthermore, finding a software vulnerability early in development will warn the programmer and lessen the likelihood of this type of programming error being repeated in other parts of the software project. Using Continuous Integration (CI) for checking for security vulnerabilities every time new code is committed to a repository can alert developers of security flaws almost immediately after they are introduced. Finally, continuous integration tests for security give software developers the option of making the test results public so that users or potential users are given assurance that the software is well tested for security flaws. While there already exists general-purpose continuous integration tools such as Jenkins-CI and GitLab-CI, our tool is primarily focused on integrating third party security testing programs and generating reports on classes of vulnerabilities found in a software project. Our tool performs all tests in a snapshot (stateless) virtual machine to be able to have reproducible tests in an environment similar to the deployment environment. This paper introduces the design and implementation of a tool for security-focused continuous integration. The test cases used demonstrate the ability of the tool to effectively uncover security vulnerabilities even in open source software products such as ImageMagick and a smart grid application, Emoncms.