Method 800 moves on to operation 806 where a difference between the real-time sensor value measurement from a sensor integrated with the monitored system and a predicted sensor value for the sensor is determined As discussed above, the analytics engine is configured to receive “real-time” data from sensors interfaced with the monitored system via the data acquisition hub (or, alternatively directly from the sensors) and “virtual” data from the virtual system modeling engine simulating the data output from a virtual system model of the monitored system. In one embodiment, the values are in units of electrical power output (i.e., current or voltage) from an electrical power generation or transmission system. It should be appreciated, however, that the values can essentially be any unit type as long as the sensors can be configured to output data in those units or the analytics engine can convert the output data received from the sensors into the desired unit type before performing the comparison.