Students: F.J. Olugbodi

Project: Prospect Theoretic Analysis of Cybersecurity Threats in Demand Response

Poster: Vertical (PDF) | Horizontal (PDF)

Institution: Lehigh University

Major: Civil Engineering

Advisor: Shalinee Kishore and Parv Venkitasubramaniam

Abstract

Cyber-enabled Demand Response is characterized as an electricity tariff imposed by central controllers and utility regulators to motivate changes in electric use by consumers to better match the load requested with the supply. This real-time component of the two-way communication link exposes Demand-Response systems to cybersecurity threats; therefore, it is critical that the safety and reliability of such systems be ensured and safeguarded in the event of a malicious attack. Cybersecurity concerns, in this study, are exploited via price-data injection, in which the tariff dispatched by utility regulators to end-use customers is supplanted by the attacker’s synthesized tariff; the resulting implications of this attack propagate miscommunication, and social and psychological disruptions. To circumvent the occurrence of cybersecurity threats in a Demand-Response system, we model and examine what happens to the system under a malicious attack using an approach built on the foundational constitution of the consumers’ level of rational response and the stability of a grid’s operations thereafter. Prospect theory (PT) and Expected Utility theory (EUT) were used to capture this rationality.

F.J. Olugbodi

About F.J. Olugbodi

Oluwafolajinmi Olugbodi, junior at Lehigh University studying Computer Engineering from San Antoni, Texas. I currently conduct research with Professors Shalinee Kishore and Parv Venkitasubramaniam within the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department to study Demand-Response systems under malicious, price-data injection attacks using an approach built on the foundational constitution of the consumers’ level of rational response and the stability of a grid’s operations thereafter. Besides research, I am the Event Coordinator for the IEEE student branch at Lehigh University. I also help mentor, by Professor Mooi Choo Chuah’s Initiative, a community of minority students studying Computer Science through the coordination of professional development courses, tutoring, and distinguished minority guest speakers. I enjoy skateboarding and diving into music and its many facets through drumming and playing the guitar.