Certicom Corp., the global leader in smart energy security technologies, today announced that its Device Authentication Service for ZigBee Smart Energy has shipped more than one million certificates for smart meters and ZigBee Smart Energy networked devices to help utilities and their customers enable more efficient energy consumption.
With the Obama administration’s focus on reducing energy consumption and smart-grid technology, utilities are increasingly investing in smart metering for more efficient energy management and to address environmental concerns. As they build out smart metering infrastructure, they need to ensure that the networks are protected from unauthorized access and that customer information is secure.
ZigBee is a specification based on IEEE 802.15.4 standard for wireless devices enabling low-cost and low-bandwidth networks for the mass-market. The specification is regulated by the ZigBee Alliance with over 300 members worldwide. The ZigBee Alliance developed the ZigBee Smart Energy Public Application Profile to meet the requirements of wireless smart energy applications such as demand response, load control and energy efficiency programs.
The ZigBee Smart Energy profile uses bandwidth efficient Elliptic Curve Qu Vanstone (ECQV) implicit certificates to authenticate devices on the network and performs secure key agreement based on authentic device identities. Certificate-based device authentication and key establishment enables a robust Smart Energy ecosystem where devices can be deployed and managed with confidence, avoiding the security issues associated with previous wireless networking innovations, such as WEP.
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