Essentials of passive defense in electric power systems

Critical infrastructures especially electric power systems play a key role in sustainable development of modern societies; therefore, power systems security has attracted significant attention in recent years. Concerns about malicious attacks on electric power grids, e.g. terrorist attacks, have manifested the necessity of passive defense implementation to reduce the likelihood of successful attacks and to minimize the damages and negative consequences. To optimally allocate passive defense resources, familiarity with issues related to power system security aspects, vulnerabilities, interaction with other infrastructures, crisis management stages and time scale, beneficial and adverse technologies, and hardening optimization methodologies is needed. This paper provides an extensive overview of passive defense essentials in electric power systems.