Smart meters vulnerable to false data injection

Power grids connect electricity producers to consumers through interconnected transmission and distribution networks. In these networks, system monitoring is necessary to ensure reliable power grid operation.

The analysis of smart meter measurements and power system models that estimate the state of the power grid are a routine part of system monitoring.

False data injection attacks exploit the configuration of power grids by introducing arbitrary errors into state variables while bypassing existing techniques for bad measurement detection.

nCircle announced the results of a survey of 104 energy security professionals. When asked, “Do smart meter installations have sufficient security controls to protect against false data injection?” 61% said “no”.

Patrick Miller, the founder, CEO and president of EnergySec, noted, “Smart meters vary widely in capability and many older meters were not designed to adequately protect against false data injection. It doesn’t help that some communication protocols used by the smart meter infrastructure don’t offer much protection against false data injection either.”

“Together, these facts highlight a much larger potential problem with data integrity across the smart grid infrastructure. Because our nation relies on the smart grid to deliver robust and reliable power, we need to make sure that all systems that process usage data, especially those that make autonomous, self-correcting, self-healing decisions, assure data integrity,” Miller added.