Security in cyber-physical energy systems

Abstract

In this paper, we consider cybersecurity in the context of distributed estimation in Cyber-Physical Energy Systems (CPES). Distributed estimation is where the state of the energy system is to be estimated via a collection of geographically dispersed sensors. In order to implement the estimator, the sensors, in addition to sensing, implement a simple data fusion protocol that relies on inter-sensor communication. We study estimation of energy systems when there is an adversarial attack on the sensed and communicated information. We propose a novel methodology to address the detection of such attacks, and further incorporate appropriate remedial actions in the estimator. Our methodology is based on the notions of local consistency and nodal consistency and is further reinforced by exploiting the underlying physical-layer in the energy-system description.