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A Smart Meter and Smart House Integrated to an IdM and Key-based Scheme for Providing Integral Security for a Smart Grid ICT

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Abstract

The literature does not present integral solutions to allow using the same credential to access the smart meter and smart house from an electric utility and vice-versa. The main reason being the technology gap in the communication between the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and the Internet. The technology used in the Internet domain to communicate with Data Concentrators (DC) and the electric utility is more powerful than the technology used in the communication between smart meters and the DC, which is bandwidth limited and better suited to the Internet of Things (IoT) domain. Therefore, we are proposing the use of Identity Management (IdM) and a key-based scheme to enable the integration of IoT and the Internet using the same credentials, without creating a security bottleneck in the communication. An additional security mechanism is provided in the smart house context to isolate the house from direct accesses from the Internet, though allowing the utility to reconfigure the electric power consumption profile to avoid a potential blackout, for instance. Our proposal includes multi-sensor anti-tampering techniques to provide physical protection to a smart meter, in conjunction with a multilevel integrity mechanism to provide logical protection to its resource-constrained microcontroller, given the smart meter is a key component to mitigate electricity consumption fraud. The prototype has shown that our proposal is feasible for protecting the smart house, smart meter and the end-to-end communication between smart meter or house and the utility.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially sponsored by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), grants 307346/2015-3 and 404963/2013-7. Vilmar Abreu Junior wishes to thanks to CNPq for scholarship granting, process 381612/2014-7. We wish to thank for the valuable contribution to the electric engineering Alison Lando, Ivan Chueiri, Voldi Zambenedetti and Marcio Hamerschmidt (Copel). Moreover, we thanks to our partners from industry, Siemens and Copel.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Program in Computer Science, Pontifical Catholic University of Parana, Curitiba, Brazil

    Vilmar Abreu, Altair Santin, Alex Xavier, Adriano Witkovski, Rafael Ribeiro & Maicon Stihler

  2. Polytechnic School, Pontifical Catholic University of Parana, Curitiba, Brazil

    Alison Lando, Voldi Zambenedetti & Ivan Chueiri

  3. Federal Center for Technological Education of Minas Gerais, Leopoldina, Minas Gerais, Brazil

    Maicon Stihler

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  1. Vilmar Abreu
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Correspondence to Vilmar Abreu.

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Abreu, V., Santin, A., Xavier, A. et al. A Smart Meter and Smart House Integrated to an IdM and Key-based Scheme for Providing Integral Security for a Smart Grid ICT. Mobile Netw Appl 23, 967–981 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-017-0960-4

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