Design of Robust Mutual Authentication and Key Establishment Security Protocol for Cloud-Enabled Smart Grid Communication

In recent days, the most important concern in the Internet of Things (IoT) is to experience distinct technologies in the communication systems. Smart grid is a pertinent common application under a single umbrella of the IoT and it can accomplish the communication via the Internet Protocol to sustain the information exchange between the service provider and the smart meter in the system. However, IP-based communication systems make this task susceptible to several serious security attacks. To prevent these attacks, many security protocols between the service provider and smart meter have been proposed in the literature. Existing security mechanisms allow the smart meters to establish a connection with the service provider, but it is essential to design a security system by which the service provider can communicate with multiple smart meters and establish a connection with them. To establish such connection, all the smart meters need be authenticated with the service provider and agree on an individual session key. In this article, we propose a novel mutually authenticated key establishment protocol between the service provider and the smart meter by which the service provider can initiate the communication. The proposed protocol is proven to be correct using the formal method Gong, Needham, and Yahalom logic. The protocol is also simulated in the automated tool ProVerif and the results are detailed. The proposed protocol and the existing pertinent protocols are compared in several aspects. Comparison results show that our protocol outperforms the others.

Automated summary

This article explores the importance of smart grid in the Internet of Things and the security issues in its communication system, proposing a mutually authenticated key establishment protocol to ensure the communication security between the service provider and smart meters.