The "three lines of defense" of a power system have played an important role in ensuring the security of the power grid for a long time. This has ensured the safe and stable operation of the power system in the event of various accidents. Relay protection is responsible for fast and reliable fault removal, and is the first line of defense to ensure the safety of the power grid. This paper first introduces the challenges brought by the development of the power grid to the "first line of defense", and analyzes the reasons for the insufficient sensitivity to internal faults of traditional power-frequency relay protection and the coexistence of misoperation and rejection risks. Secondly, it sorts out the measures of relay protection to meet the challenges. A main protection method based on the parameter characteristics of the fault model, wide-area protection technology based on the multi-information and a relay protection method based on the transient quantity are proposed. Finally, suggestions are made for building a more complete and stronger "first line of defense". By strengthening the function of preventive control in the pre-fault and post-fault stages, the occurrence of secondary cascading failures can be blocked, and coordination between the first line of defense and subsequent lines of defense can be strengthened to jointly resist the occurrence of systemic accidents. This work is supported by the Science and Technology Project of the Headquarters of State Grid Corporation of China (No. 5100-202199529A-0-5-ZN).