Reducing Attack Opportunities Through Decentralized Event-Triggered Control

Cyber-physical systems are prevalent in many critical infrastructures and are vulnerable to a variety of attacks from the network. Decentralized control systems are particularly vulnerable since they rely heavily on network communication to achieve their goals. To address network vulnerabilities, we present an event-triggered network connection and communication protocol that minimizes the amount of time agents are connected to the network, reducing the window of opportunity for attacks. This mechanism is a function of only local information and ensures stability for the overall system in attack-free scenarios. Our approach distinguishes itself from current decentralized event-triggered control strategies by considering an undirected and connected communication graph and by not assuming that agents are always connected to the network to receive critical information from other agents. An algorithm describing this network connection and communication protocol is provided, and our approach is illustrated via simulation.