Effective measurement design for cyber security

Abstract

Cyber-attacks against power systems have been widely researched in recent years. Several studies have so far focused on ways of deceiving the state estimator so that the resulting estimates would be wrong. On the other hand, the role of network topology and measurement design on detectability of cyber-attacks has not been widely investigated. This work examines the measurements and network topology to identify vulnerabilities against targeted cyber-attacks. Specifically, it considers the leverage measurements, whose errors are typically not easily detected and therefore they may bias estimators when they carry gross errors. The paper also illustrates that this vulnerability can be addressed by strategic replacement of few of these measurements by phasor measurement units (PMUs).