Integrity protection in a smart grid environment for wireless access of smart meters

Abstract

To meet future challenges of energy grids, secure communication between involved control systems is necessary. Therefore the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has published security standards concerning a central communication unit for energy grids called Smart Meter Gateway (SMGW). The present security concept of the SPIDER project takes these standards into consideration but extends their level of information security by integrating elements from the Trusted Computing approach. Additionally, a tamper resistant grid is integrated with chosen hardware modules and a trustworthy boot process is applied. To continually measure the SMGW and smart meter (SM) integrity the approach Trusted Network Connect (TNC) from the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) is used. Hereby a Trusted Core Network (TCN) can be established to protect the smart grid components against IT based attacks. That is necessary, especially by the use of wireless connections between the SMGW an d smart meter components

Research Advancements Towards in Existing Smart Metering over Smart Grid

“…Hence, adding certain external component assists in retaining the security was evident in various research works. Similar cases were found in Germany where Detken et al [49] has introduced a grid that is resilient against tamper and was integrated with the hardware model. The authors have designed a core integrated with WLAN in order resist threat.…”

Cyber security for smart grid systems: Status, challenges and perspectives

“…Malicious users misuse the information to harm others or take advantages from it. 2) Cyber Attacks Targeting Integrity Main motivation of these types of attacks is to disrupt the data exchange in the smart grid by illegally modifying or inserting false information [25]- [28]. 3) Cyber Attacks Targeting Availability Attackers' main motivation is to block or delay the communication in the smart grid so that the power delivery could be interrupted.…”

“…To prevent integrity attacks, a power fingerprinting technique has been proposed in [25], a volt-var control (VVC) based scheme has been proposed in [27], and a Trusted Network Connect (TNC) base approach had been studied in [28].…”

Communication and Security Technologies for Smart Grid

“…Electricitytheftrepresentsamajorchallengetoutilitycompaniesandhasaprofoundeffectonenergy cost,utilityrevenue,andreliabilityofthegrid.Aspointedoutby (Smith,2004),amaliciousconsumer To protect the smart meter gateway from ICT attacks (Detken, Genzel, Rudolph, & Jahnke, 2014),proposedatrustedcorenetworkarchitecture.Thenetworkusesatrustedplatformmodule,a trustedneighborhooddiscoveryprotocol,andatrustworthybootprocess.Thedrivingforcesbehind thedevelopmentofthesecuritysolutionarethe"chameleon"malwareandthesecuritystandards elaboratedbytheGermanFederalOfficeforInformationSecurityforthesmartmetergateway.…”