A secured access control architecture consideration for PLC based smart grids

Power supply, distribution and generation industry is now turning the existing electrical grids to smart grids, thus making them more efficient in both effective power management and reliability, reduced production costs, and more environmentally friendly energy generation. Despite its attractive features, Smart Grid technology remains vulnerable to security threats. This paper summaries some of these potential security issues by exploring a data access control mechanism that ensures privacy to customers. The proposed access control mechanism gives selective access to consumer data stored in data repositories and used by different smart grid users. A n attribute-based encryption (ABE) is suggested. The entire grid network is subdivided into clusters each with its own remote terminal unit (RTU) as well as a gateway smart meter. User data in a given cluster is aggregated and sent to the local substation where it is monitored by the RTU. RTUs and users have attributes and cryptographic keys distributed by several key distribution centers (KDC). RTUs send data encrypted under a set of attributes. Users can decrypt information provided they have valid attributes. The access control scheme is quite resilient because of its b e i n g distributed in nature and does not rely on a single KDC to distribute keys. The encryption algorithm is based on Diffie-Hellman key establishment protocol and hash-based message authentication code, which allows smart meters at different clusters of the smart grid to mutually authenticate prior to data/information exchange and in the process maintaining low latency as well as relatively fewer authentication associated messages . Overall the control scheme is relatively collusion resistant.