Contract-Based Incentive Mechanisms for Honeypot Defense in Advanced Metering Infrastructure

Abstract

Honeypot defense deployment is considered as a promising technology to protect the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), especially Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), threatened by cyber-attacks. AMI defensive effectiveness depends on the honeypot deployment of the small-scale electricity suppliers (SESs) in sharing defense data. However, since the honeypot system is an additional defensive tool deployed by SESs, traditional power retailers (TPRs) cannot confirm in advance that the defense data shared by SES is valid. Therefore, it is necessary to design an incentive mechanism based on the information asymmetry to encourage SES to share defense data honestly. In this paper, we propose a honeypot deployment contract-theoretic model (HDCM) to improve the defensive effectiveness of AMI, where SES will honestly share defense data and the defense cost of TPR will be reduced. We first divide the SESs' contribution into finite types, and model the defense data sharing contract between the TPR and SESs. Then, the contract feasibility of HDCM is derived in necessary and sufficient conditions. At last, we analyze the optimal contract offered by TPR in the continuous case of SESs. Numerical simulations show that the HDCM can incentivize SESs to deploy honeypot and honestly share defense data, and make defensive effectiveness of AMI close to the information symmetry case.