ASIA: An Access Control, Session Invocation and Authorization Architecture for Home Energy Appliances in Smart Energy Grid Environments

With the advent of the smart energy grid – an energy transportation and distribution network being combined with an IT network for its monitoring and control – information security has gained tremendous importance for energy distribution and energy automation systems. Integrated security functionality is crucial to ensure a reliable and continuous operation of the smart energy grid. Further security related challenges arise from the integration of millions of smart homes into the smart grid. This paper gives an overview of the smart energy grid environment and its challenges. Many future use cases are centered around the smart home, using an ICT gateway. Approaches to protect the access and data exchange are described, preventing manipulation of ICT gateway operation. The paper presents ASIA – an Authentication, Session Invocation, and Authorization component to be used in the smart energy grid, to protect ICT gateways and to cope with problems like ICT gateway discovery and ICT gateway addressing.