Measurement unit placement against injection attacks for the secured operation of an IIoT-based smart grid

Carefully constructed cyber-attacks directly influence the data integrity and the operational functionality of the smart energy grid. In this paper, we have explored the data integrity attack behaviour in a wide-area sensor-enabled IIoT-SCADA system. We have demonstrated that an intelligent cyber-attacker can inject false information through the sensor devices that may remain stealthy in the traditional detection module and corrupt estimated system states at the utility control centres. Next, to protect the operation, we defined a set of critical measurements that need to be protected for the resilient operation of the grid. Finally, we placed the measurement units using an optimal allocation strategy by ensuring that a limited number of nodes are protected against the attack while the system observability is satisfied. Under such scenarios, a wide range of experiments has been conducted to evaluate the performance considering IEEE 14-bus, 24 bus-reliability test system, 85-bus, 141-bus and 145-bus test systems. Results show that by ensuring the protection of around 25% of the total nodes, the IIoT-SCADA enabled energy grid can be protected against injection attacks while observability of the network is well-maintained.