Security in IoT-based smart grid through quantum key distribution

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is made up of a large group of networks, which consists of many physical objects provided with the capabilities of making computation and communication is logically integrated at various distinctive levels of internet. The Smart Grid (SG) forms a system which consists of various operative and energy measures including smart objects, various smart appliances, smart meters, sensors, energy efficiency resources. The Smart Grid is considered as the largest IoT network where security is the prime factor that hinders the fast and extensive adoption of the IoT-based Smart Grid. In this paper, various security-related issues are described and a mutual authentication scheme for the Smart Grid Users and Smart Grid Server based on Quantum Key Distribution has been proposed. The proposed scheme achieves mutual authentication between Smart Grid Users and Smart Grid Server and provides security against various security attacks by generating secret key, which consists of qubits. The formal verification of the proposed scheme is performed using QKD simulator that confirms its security in the presence of an adversary.