Design principles and experimental analysis of secure data exchange approaches for distributed cyber-physical sensors in electric grid systems

Abstract

Critical infrastructure systems such as the electric grid are increasingly cyber-physical, where communication and control are tightly intertwined with the physics-based processes of power flow. To ensure safe and resilient operation of these cyber-physical systems, a variety of sensors and analyses are required for monitoring and detection of abnormal or malicious behavior to achieve full cyber-physical situational awareness (CPSA). To share this collected data with different analysis platforms, whether intrusion detection systems or state estimation algorithms, secure data exchange is essential. Designing secure data exchange across interconnected systems of systems (SoS) can be challenging without considering unique characteristics of the underlying cyber and physical processes. It is important to consider different types of communication protocols, frequency of communications, and types of communications (e.g., sensor measurements, control commands). In this paper, we provide design principles and experimental results for secure and resilient data exchange across distributed sensors and analytics in decentralized, cyber-physical energy systems. Specifically, secure data exchange technologies such as IPFS, synchronic web, multichain, and storage/sharing principles are presented and experimental results are provided to assess their applicability to exemplar distributed CPSA sensors.