Primary concern

Industry group Prime Alliance is battling to prevent security issues scuppering global smart meter rollouts. Michael John explains

As European countries move closer to wide-scale adoption of smart metering, the need for a co-ordinated approach among product vendors, solution designers, communication technologists and individual utilities has never been clearer. If diverse technologies are to work together seamlessly, then standards for various aspects of the optimal system design are required.

Industry group Prime Alliance was founded to provide a forum for the definition, establishment and support of an open, single specification and standard for a narrowband powerline for smart grid products and services. The ultimate goal is the development of a global powerline standard that will enable multi-­vendor interoperability across a series of flexible and highly efficient smart grid networks.

However, due consideration must be given to issues surrounding data privacy and data security. The possibility of unauthorised access to sensitive data must be minimised. Meanwhile, the level of risk posed by cyber threats is rising because of the rapid growth in machine-to-machine interactions enabled by digital communications and the internet.

Security experts have warned that smart metering could introduce a strategic vulnerability to a country’s essential infrastructure: the potential for unauthorised supply interruption increases and does not solely require physical tampering. Thus, the software procedures like the combination of commands that can cause meters to interrupt supply, the firmware upgrades that will run in the meters themselves, and the cryptographic keys used to authenticate these commands all need to be secured against external unwanted interaction to safeguard critical portions of the grid.

If not addressed, Prime Alliance believes these security issues will become challenging barriers to successful smart meter rollouts, and could have an impact on consumer acceptance of the new technology. The alliance is also aware that addressing security concerns is imperative before devices are deployed. Security measures will need to be incorporated holistically and by design at critical points across smart metering infrastructure. This must start within the home area network and local area network, and also cover the entire wide area network to the database within the utility.

Consequently, the optimal approach is to ensure that information security is considered a critical priority of any smart grid in the upfront design, and that end-to-end security provisions are inherent in any system design. To that end, the Prime Alliance has incorporated the consideration of security issues into the development of its specification and standard for a narrowband powerline.

A roadmap is already in place, and work has started on establishing the necessary security requirements. A sound security architecture design has already been developed, one that will ensure that reliable privacy and security levels are integrated in core specifications. This covers critical components such as secure firmware updates, trust provisioning and critical command security.

The Prime Alliance is bringing information security concerns into the heart of the process to develop and deploy interoperable narrowband powerline. In so doing, it will help overcome one of the biggest obstacles to universal smart meter adoption.

Michael John, security co-ordinator at Prime Alliance and solutions manager at Elster

This article first appeared in Utility Week’s print edition of 5th October 2012.

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