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Preserving the Privacy and Cybersecurity of Home Energy Data

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Emerging Trends in Cybersecurity Applications

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Abstract

The field of energy data presents many opportunities for applying the principles of privacy and cybersecurity. In this chapter, we focus on home electricity data and the possible use and misuse of this data for attacks and corresponding protection mechanisms. If an attacker can deduce sufficiently precise information about a house location and its occupancy at given times, this may present a physical security threat.

We review previous literature in this area. We then obtain hourly solar generation data from over 2300 houses and develop an attack to identify the location of the houses using historical weather data. We discuss common use cases of home energy data and suggest defences against the proposed attack using privacy and cryptographic techniques.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Energy Data Innovation, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Richard Bean

  2. School of Information Technology and Electricity Engineering, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Yanjun Zhang, Ryan K.  L. Ko, Xinyu Mao & Guangdong Bai

Authors
  1. Richard Bean
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  2. Yanjun Zhang
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  3. Ryan K.  L. Ko
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  4. Xinyu Mao
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  5. Guangdong Bai
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Correspondence to Richard Bean .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Detroit Mercy, Detroit, MI, USA

    Kevin Daimi

  2. Kent Institute Australia, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Abeer Alsadoon

  3. Ulster University, Ulster, UK

    Cathryn Peoples

  4. EPITA Engineering School, Paris, France

    Nour El Madhoun

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Bean, R., Zhang, Y., Ko, R.K. ., Mao, X., Bai, G. (2023). Preserving the Privacy and Cybersecurity of Home Energy Data. In: Daimi, K., Alsadoon, A., Peoples, C., El Madhoun, N. (eds) Emerging Trends in Cybersecurity Applications. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09640-2_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09640-2_15

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-09640-2

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