Coupled Cyber and Physical Systems: Embracing Smart Cities with Multistream Data Flow

Information and communications technology has been widely used in grid modernization to facilitate the vision of smart cities. However, it has also opened up a new frontier of cybersecurity. Recent government reports and other literature indicate that the cyberthreats targeting electric grids continue to grow significantly in number and sophistication. However, unlike conventional Internets that rely on commercial off-theshelf security techniques, the electric grid is a cyberphysical system, so applying these methods dedicated to Internet applications cannot achieve effective and efficient attack-resilient solutions. Instead, the cyberphysical properties of electric grids should be integrated to design a cross-layer framework that considers the characteristics and resources of both the communication network and power-application layer.