Cyber-Physical Security in Smart Grids: A Comprehensive Guide to Key Research Areas, Threats, and Countermeasures

Recent technological advances in communication networks, intelligent devices, power electronics, and phasor measurement units have significantly transformed the operation of modern power systems. This evolution gave rise to smart grids, which enable the flow of real-time information on the operational state of the grid and of control commands across multiple communication infrastructures, using a variety of protocols and standards, between control centers and devices deployed throughout the grid’s physical structure. At the same time, it has exposed power systems to new challenges and threats, due to the vulnerabilities inherited from the different components they integrate. Attackers have a variety of attacks at their disposal, by which they can disturb the availability of electricity as well as cause damage to the smart grid’s physical structure. Therefore, cybersecurity has become an important aspect of the smart grid concept. This field of research has attracted the attention of many researchers, and in the last decade or so, the number of studies on the cyber-physical security of smart grids has surged significantly. Proportionally, an important number of survey papers were published as well. It has therefore become more difficult to navigate literature on the topic of smart grid cyber-physical security due to the large number of papers, the complexity of the grid’s structure, and the variety of attacks, resolution methods, and techniques. To address this issue, in this work, we present a comprehensive review of existing literature reviews on the topic of smart grid cyber-physical security. We reviewed 100 survey papers, which were categorized into general surveys, attack-specific surveys, method-specific surveys, and component-specific surveys. We discussed and highlighted research tendencies in terms of attacks and methods used to protect smart grids. Additionally, we presented an overview of the different research challenges and possible future directions.