Toward Mission-Centric Cyber-Physical Defense: Coordinated, Explainable, and Human-in-the-Loop Strategies for Power CPS

The convergence of cyber, physical, and human elements in modern power systems brings both operational advantages and escalating security challenges. Beyond traditional False Data Injection Attack (FDIA) defenses, emerging threats now involve coordinated, multi-stage, and AI-driven cyber-physical attacks across technical, organizational, and market layers. This review proposes a mission-centric defense paradigm for Power Cyber-Physical Systems (Power CPS), integrating architectural resilience through redundancy, diversity, and trustworthy sensing with real-time, explainable, and human-in-the-loop defense mechanisms. It emphasizes the role of multi-agent coordination, edge-cloud collaboration, and operator-centered situational awareness in ensuring effective response and mission continuity. Post-attack recovery strategies, including data reconstruction, adaptive reconfiguration, and resilience metric integration, are also explored. Finally, the review highlights future research and cross-sector collaboration needs to advance holistic cyber-physical-human resilience for secure energy system operations.