Smart Resilient Cyber Secure Micro Grids

There are different types of security attacks that are more common now in the technology world. Data gets exchanged all the time and passes through diverse channels that challenges the scientists with efficient ways of protecting them from the hackers. One specific application area that is highly vulnerable to such cyber-attacks in recent days is the electrical energy infrastructures. Securing such infrastructures from these cyber-attacks is very critical and challenging. In this research effort, one such energy infrastructure called the micro grid will be taken into study and analyzed for protecting them against different types of cyber threats. As per the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) guidelines, cyber-attacks are classified into three levels: attacks compromising availability, confidentiality and integrity. In this project, these three levels of attacks on micro grid network will be studied thoroughly. Looking at a typical micro grid infrastructure, the vulnerable points are the distributed energy resources, the micro grid controller, and the communication network which facilitates data exchange between the individual micro grid components. Each of these vulnerable areas will be taken into study and analyzed for proposing different ways to build smart resilient cyber secure micro girds. Following are three important phases involved in this research project.1. Study the different times of cyber-attacks (availability, confidentiality, integrity) on micro grids, 2. Analyze the after effects of such cyber-attacks on these micro grids, 3. Looking into different ways of building smart resilient cyber secure micro grids. The concept of machine learning will be involved to build systems that can learn from the different types of vulnerabilities, take own decisions to prevent the attacks, and self-heal or reverse back to their original state that they existed before the attacks was made. This multi-disciplinary research of building such smart resilient cyber to secure micro grids will unfold a lot of challenges involved in each of the different phases mentioned above.