Cyber-physical security of Wide-Area Monitoring, Protection and Control in a smart grid environment

Abstract

Smart grid initiatives will produce a grid that is increasingly dependent on its cyber infrastructure in order to support the numerous power applications necessary to provide improved grid monitoring and control capabilities. However, recent findings documented in government reports and other literature, indicate the growing threat of cyber-based attacks in numbers and sophistication targeting the nation’s electric grid and other critical infrastructures. Specifically, this paper discusses cyber-physical security of Wide-Area Monitoring, Protection and Control (WAMPAC) from a coordinated cyber attack perspective and introduces a game-theoretic approach to address the issue. Finally, the paper briefly describes how cyber-physical testbeds can be used to evaluate the security research and perform realistic attack-defense studies for smart grid type environments.

Visión General, Características y Funcionalidades de la Red Eléctrica Inteligente (Smart Grid)

“…Por ejemplo, el enfoque de la teoría de juegos, basado en interacciones en estructuras formalizadas de incentivos, permite llevar a cabo procesos de decisión para abordar el tema de la seguridad cibernética en el monitoreo y la protección. Igualmente, el control desde una perspectiva coordinada ciber-ataque (Ashok et al 2014) puede mejorar la seguridad. En resumen, las asociaciones del sector de la energía están gestionando la ciberseguridad al tiempo que mantienen las funciones críticas de suministro de energía para garantizar la fiabilidad de la red modernizada.…”

Vulnerabilities in Lagrange‐based distributed model predictive control

“…A highly relevant case study involving a power network illustrates the potential of this mechanism. Power systems problems particularly deserve attention due to its vulnerability, which has been exploited due to the growing threat of cyber‐based attacks in numbers and sophisticated targeting …”

“…Power systems problems particularly deserve attention due to its vulnerability, which has been exploited due to the growing threat of cyber-based attacks in numbers and sophisticated targeting. 50 One disadvantage of this defense approach is that an innocent agent can be penalized for presenting an extreme value in the information exchanged. The resulting loss of performance is the price to pay to gain robustness against potential attackers.…”

A method for modeling and evaluation of the security of cyber-physical systems

“…Case studies in this research demonstrate the variations of vulnerability indices with respect to attacks from insider and outsider and the effectiveness of a countermeasure. A game-theoretic framework to model cyber-physical security for wide-area monitoring, protection and control applications (WAMPAC) from a coordinated cyber attack perspective is proposed in [13]. This work introduces a game-theoretic approach to address the issue.…”