Secure service provision in smart grid communications

The smart grid provides a platform for thirdparty service providers to remotely monitor and manage energy usage for consumers. At the same time, the involvement of service providers brings a new set of security threats to the smart grid. In this article, we first identify the cyber security challenges on service provision in the smart grid. Then we present two main security issues related to service provision and provide potential solutions. The first one is to establish a secure communication procedure among the electric utility, consumers, and service providers. The second one is to provide a privacy-preserving yet accountable authentication framework among the smart grid entities without relying on any trusted third party. Finally, we suggest directions of future work on secure service provision by describing several open issues. 1979-2012 IEEE.This work was supported National Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61070155), Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-09-0685), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2012FZA5017), projects 217006/E20 funded by the Research Council of Norway, the European Commission FP7 Project EVANS (grant no. 2010-269323), and a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong SAR, China (Project No. CityU 111208).Scopus2-s2.0-8486488665