Summary of the main results of the ESSENCE project

ESSENCE - Emerging Security Standards to the EU power network controls and other Critical Equipment has been a research project funded by the European Union under the CIPS EU program aiming at evaluating costs and benefits of applying emerging security standards to the European power grid controls systems, based on two case studies. Throughout 2012-2014, the ESSENCE project performed a study in order to evaluate these costs and benefits on a rational base. To our knowledge this exercise has never been performed again so, although not updated, the results represent a unique source for cost benchmarking. This document is an appendix to "Evaluating the prudency of cybersecurity investments: Guidelines for Energy Regulators" and is intended to explain the background of some information included in the guidelines.