The development of DNP3 was a comprehensive effort to achieve open, standards-based Interoperability between substation outstations and master stations for the electric utility industry. Since its inception, DNP3 has also become widely utilized in adjacent industries such as water / waste water, transportation and the oil and gas industry.

Recent developments include:

• Adoption of the DNP3 specifications as an IEEE standard (IEEE 1815)
• DNP3 Secure Authentication, which defines a protocol mechanism that:
• Enables a DNP3 outstation to unambiguously determine it is communicating with a user who is authorized to access the services of the outstation.
• Enables a DNP3 master to unambiguously determine that it is communicating with the correct outstation.