Work

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

Year: 2026

Type: article

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). A diverse set of sensors are needed across interconnected systems of systems to achieve CPSA that collect different types of data at different time-scales, volume, and levels of sensitivity. 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. For example, in the electric power grid, it is important to consider the types of communication protocols, frequency of communications, and types of control schemes alongside the physics-based processes of power flow and types of measurements such as voltage, frequency, and current. In prior work, these important considerations were explored for heterogenous sensors, networks, and data types and several secure data exchange approaches were presented. In this paper, we build upon that research and provide design principles and experimental results for secure and resilient data exchange across distributed sensors and analytics in decentralized, cyber-physical energy systems.

Source: Energy Informatics

DOI: 10.1186/s42162-026-00617-w