Theses and Dissertations Collection

Engineers responsible for designing the protection, control, and operational technology systems used within the electric power system continue to adopt new technology even as some of this technology presents a clear and seemingly unfixable risk to the continued safe and reliable operation of the power system itself. This thesis focuses on the “seemingly unfixable” aspect of the technology and how that can impact the operation of the electric power grid. In this thesis I explore developing the first principles of cybersecurity. I use these first principles to take a look at simple power system protection architectures and describe why the cybersecurity problem is so deeply entrenched. From there, I explore how to use these notional first principles to derive a relative measure of system security. Finally, I conclude with recommendations for future research.