WaterCrypt: Joint Watermarking and Encryption Scheme for Secure Privacy-Preserving Data Aggregation in Smart Metering Systems

Abstract

As the world is embracing the new era of smart technologies and the development of IoT equipment, such as smart grid and metering systems, a significant concern related to the privacy and security of user’s confidential information is forming rapidly. Many of the existing solutions are still suffering from plenty of time and power consumption, and security vulnerabilities. Secure data aggregation in smart metering systems is still a challenging task due to a plethora of attainable cyber and physical attacks. This paper presents the novel WaterCrypt technique based on reversible watermarking and Paillier encryption that significantly reduces the battery consumption of resource constrained smart meters by introducing a unique Encryption Server as well as making use of the homomorphic encryption properties to secure real time data transmission. In addition, the reversible watermarking technique used in the protocol guarantees the integrity and authenticity of data. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme offers a privacy friendly, secure data transmission and aggregation solution in smart metering systems in a cost effective manner.