A Review on Cybersecurity Analysis, Attack Detection, and Attack Defense Methods in Cyber-physical Power Systems

Abstract

Potential malicious cyber-attacks to power systems which are connected to a wide range of stakeholders from the top to tail will impose significant societal risks and challenges. The timely detection and defense are of crucial importance for safe and reliable operation of cyber-physical power systems (CPPSs). This paper presents a comprehensive review of some of the latest attack detection and defense strategies. Firstly, the vulnerabilities brought by some new information and communication technologies (ICTs) are analyzed, and their impacts on the security of CPPSs are discussed. Various malicious cyber-attacks on cyber and physical layers are then analyzed within CPPSs framework, and their features and negative impacts are discussed. Secondly, two current mainstream attack detection methods including state estimation based and machine learning based methods are analyzed, and their benefits and drawbacks are discussed. Moreover, two current mainstream attack defense methods including active defense and passive defense methods are comprehensively discussed. Finally, the trends and challenges in attack detection and defense strategies in CPPSs are provided.

Keywords

• Cyber-physical power systems
• security threat
• attack detection
• attack defense
• state estimation
• machine learning