Decentralized Federated Anomaly Detection in Smart Grids: A P2P Gossip Approach

Decentralized Federated Anomaly Detection in Smart Grids: A P2P Gossip Approach Muhammad Akbar Husnoo a,, Adnan Anwar a, Md Enamul Haque b and Abdun Naser Mahmood c a Centre for Cyber Resilience and Trust (CREST), Deakin University, 75 Pigdons Rd, Waurn Ponds, 3216, Victoria, Australia b Centre for Smart Power and Energy Research (CSPER)), Deakin University, 75 Pigdons Rd, Waurn Ponds, 3216, Victoria, Australia c Department of Computer Science & IT, Latrobe University, Plenty Rd, Bundoora, 3086, Victoria, AustraliaA R T I C L E I N F OKeywords: Anomaly Detection Decentralized Federated Learning (DFL) Cyberattack Internet of Things (Io T) Smart Grid A B S T R A C T Amidst escalating concerns regarding security and privacy within the Smart Grid domain, the need for robust intrusion detection mechanisms in critical energy infrastructure has surged in recent times. To address the challenges posed by privacy preservation and decentralized power zones with distinct data ownership, Federated Learning (FL) has emerged as a promising privacy-preserving solution which facilitates collaborative training of attack detection models without necessitating the sharing of raw data. However, FL presents several implementation limitations in the power system domain due to its heavy reliance on a centralized aggregator and the risks of privacy leakage during model update transmission. In response to the technical bottlenecks, this paper introduces a novel decentralized federated anomaly detection scheme based on two main gossip protocols namely Random Walk and Epidemic. Our findings indicate that the Random Walk protocol exhibits superior performance compared to the Epidemic protocol, highlighting its efficacy in decentralized federated learning environments. Experimental validation of the proposed framework utilizing publicly available industrial control systems datasets demonstrates superior attack detection accuracy while safeguarding data confidentiality and mitigating the impact of communication latency and stragglers. Moreover, a notable 35% improvement in training time against conventional FL highlights the efficacy and robustness of our decentralized learning approach.1.