CPSA: A Cyber-Physical Security Assessment Tool for Situational Awareness in Smart Grid

It has now become critical and important to understanding the nature of cyber-attacks and their impact on the physical operation of emerging smart electricity grids. Modeling and simulation provide a cost-effective means to develop frameworks and algorithms that address cyber-physical security challenges facing the smart grid. Existing simulation tools support either the communication network or the power system, but not both together. Thus, it is difficult to explore the effects of cyber-physical attacks on power system dynamics and operations. In order to bridge this gap, a cyber-physical co-simulator is required. In this paper, we present a novel integrated cyber-physical security co-simulator tool capable of cyber-physical security assessment (CPSA), which simulates the communication network and the power system together. The tool identifies future vulnerable states and bad measurements and guides the operator at the control center on taking appropriate action to minimize disruption of the physical power system operation due to cyber-attack. The developed tool can be used in the understanding of power system monitoring, analyzing the nature of cyber-attacks, detecting bad measurement data, bad command, disabled devices and understand their impact on the operation of the power system.