LAUSR

Smart metering is among the most important current and future trends in smart grid development. Utility companies spearheading the smart meter revolution claim many benefits for the end-user. One of the key information technology solutions applied to smart meters is ensuring data protection and cybersecurity. Nowadays, the data tampering in smart meters is a big issue for the utilities and end-users. In particular, the advent of secure monetary transactions has inspired the diversification of blockchains as means to provide cybersecurity and encourage end-user trust. The blockchain technology has some issues such as storage and processing, which are necessary to improve for getting better performance in smart metering systems. Here, the authors propose a novel cybersecurity architecture for smart metering systems, based on blockchains to significantly enhance data security. The proposed architecture is divided into multiple tiers directed toward improving performance based on a scheme of edge, fog, and cloud computing. Besides, the authors present an optimized consensus algorithm for smart meters called proof-of-efficiency. The results show that the proposed architecture implemented can effectively improve cybersecurity and data protection for smart metering applications.