Data-driven Secure Authentication for Smart Grid IoT Networks

Internet of Things (IoT) has found wide-spread usage in cyber physical systems. We consider the security aspects related to cyber physical systems, particularly the smart grid, wherein IoT devices are deployed for monitoring and control, often in the open without any active surveillance, thereby increasing their vulnerability to security attacks. To this end, device authentication is an essential security feature for smart grid IoT networks. A desirable authentication protocol designed for IoT devices should not only be robust when the device is compromised by an adversary, it also needs to be computationally efficient in the wake of limited storage and computational capabilities of IoT devices. In this work, we address the critical issue of device security in smart grid IoT networks, and propose a data-driven, yet lightweight and privacy preserving authentication scheme for IoT devices. The performance analysis based on our experiments show that the proposed scheme is robust against heterogeneous network attacks, and significantly reduces computational load.