A Diversity-Based Substation Cyber Defense Strategy Utilizing Coloring Games

Growing cybersecurity risks in the power grid require that utilities implement a variety of security mechanisms (SMs), including VPNs, firewalls, authentication, and access control mechanisms. While these mechanisms provide some level of defense, they also may contain software vulnerabilities which allow an attack to bypass their protection. Because the same SM type is often used to protect a large number of substations, a single vulnerability could enable a coordinated attack by simultaneously targeting many substations. To protect against such an attack, utilities can adopt a strategy to use a diverse set of SMs, such that the impact from a vulnerability in any SM is minimized. This paper introduces a game-theoretic graph coloring technique to determine the optimal allocation of SM diversity that minimizes the impact of security vulnerabilities to the grid. This paper demonstrates that the proposed approach provides a Nash equilibrium solution. Furthermore, the technique is demonstrated against cyber-physical models for both IEEE-14 and IEEE-118 bus systems, and compared with other non-strategic diversity allocation methods to demonstrate its effectiveness.