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A Hierarchical Multi-Agent Based Anomaly Detection for Wide-Area Protection in Smart Grid

Conference · · 2018 Resilience Week (RWS)
Future smart grid capabilities provide assurance to expand the advanced information and communication technologies to evolve into densely interconnected cyber physical system. Remedial Action Scheme (RAS), widely used for wide-area protection, relies on the interconnected networks and data sharing devices, which are exposed to the multitude of vulnerabilities. This paper presents our proposed approach to developing multi-agent based RAS scheme against the system-aware stealthy cyber-attacks. Specifically, we propose the two-level hierarchical architecture which consists of distributed local RAS controllers (RAScs) as local agents, operating at different zones/ areas, which are constantly monitored by an overseer, the central agent. The local controllers receive local and randomly changing outside zonal measurements and cyclically forwards to the overseer. The overseer identifies the corrupted controller using the anomaly detection algorithm which processes the measurements coming from the local controllers, compute measurement errors using local and outside zonal measurements, perform validation checks, and finally detect anomalies based on the two-step verification. Next, as a proof of concept, we have implemented and validated the proposed methodology in cyber physical environment at Iowa State’s PowerCyber testbed. We have also implemented the coordinated attack vectors which involve corrupting the local controller and later performing stealthy attacks on the system’s generator. We have evaluated its performance during the online testing in terms of detection rate and Iatency. The experimental results show that it is efficient in detecting different classes of attacks, including ramp and pulse attacks.
Research Organization:
Iowa State University
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER)
Contributing Organization:
Iowa State University
DOE Contract Number:
OE0000830
OSTI ID:
1985681
Report Number(s):
DOE-0000830-18
Conference Information:
Journal Name: 2018 Resilience Week (RWS)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (6)

Moving target defense for securing smart grid communications: Architecture, implementation & evaluation conference April 2017
Wide-area Protection Research in the Smart Grid journal January 2012
Using a Distributed Agent-Based Communication Enabled Special Protection System to Enhance Smart Grid Security journal June 2013
Multi agent system based wide area protection against cascading events conference November 2012
Evolution Pathway Towards Wide Area Monitoring and Protection—A Real-World Implementation of Centralized RAS System journal May 2014
Stealthy cyber attacks and impact analysis on wide-area protection of smart grid conference September 2016

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