## 6 Conclusions  
This paper proposed a targeting framework to reduce the vulnerability indices of the smart grid. To actualize this target, two separate approaches have been deployed. The first approach addresses reducing vulnerability indices in terms of technical criteria. The second one focused on providing a cyber-security protocol to make an obstacle against the penetration of cyber-hackers. In the technical approach, the microgrid prevented the occurrence of cascading outages with the use of making a bilateral energy exchange with the smart grid. The most obvious finding to emerge from this part is a significant reduction in the network vulnerability indices owing to the cooperating microgrid. In the security respect, a multi-layer cyber-security protocol has been performed in this investigation. As already mentioned, the detection of the vulnerable points can be considered from an attacker's view as well. This can be an important issue for future research. One of the more significant findings to emerge from this part is the effectiveness of the proposed multi-layer protocol in comparison with the other approaches. On the other hand, the measuring of network vulnerability would be incorrect if the uncertainty parameter is not taken into account. For the future scope of this work, the recent vulnerability-scoring models can be considered in other to provide an accurate method in the study or in future works. In the same vein, the utility of the adopted multi-layer method includes merged blockchain, and RL can compare to other state-of-the-art approaches such as smart grids cyber security toolbox. In future works, the authors would make use of new advanced cybersecurity software such as SGIS to check information security.  
J.C.: Conceptualization, Validation, Investigation, Writing--Review & Editing. M.A.M.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Investigation, Visualization, Supervision, Writing--Original Draft, Writing--Review & Editing. U.D.: Conceptualization, Investigation, Visualization, Writing--Review & Editing. M.R.: Conceptualization, Investigation, Visualization, Writing--Review & Editing. S.H.S.: Conceptualization, Investigation, funding acquisition, Visualization, Writing--Review & Editing. S.A.O.: Conceptualization, Investigation, funding acquisition, Visualization, Writing--Review & Editing. A.A.: Conceptualization, Investigation, Visualization, Writing--Review & Editing. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research received no external funding.  
Not applicable.  
The data supporting reported results are available in the manuscript.  
This project was supported by Researchers Supporting Project number (RSP-2021/385), King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, the authors would like to thank the Estonian Centre of Excellence in Zero Energy and Resource Efficient Smart Buildings and Districts, ZEBE, grant TK146, funded by the European Regional Development Fund to support this research. This work is partially supported by (1) scientific research project of Fuzhou Polytechnic under Grant FZYJKRQCD202101 (2) Fujian Key Laboratory of New Energy Generation and Power Conversion under Grant KLIF-202102 (3) Key research topics of educational reform of Fuzhou Polytechnic under Grant 2021 jjkt001.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline \hline
**Conditions/Costs (\(c\))** & **With Connection Link** & **Without Connection Link** \\ \hline Smart grid & 2,230,789,393 & 7,058,134,347 \\ Microgrid & 14,589,325.15 & 83,172,312.71 \\ Total & 2,245,378,718 & 7,141,306,660 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 5: Comparison among different conditions for uncertainty state.