German Smart Metering and European Privacy Needs

To secure the communication between the smart meter in each household and the smart grid as well as to cover German privacy laws a smart meter protection profile (PP for the Gateway of a Smart Metering System [8]) according to the international Common Criteria (CC [1-4]) was specified by the Federal Office of Information Security (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik - BSI) in Germany. This Smart Meter Gateway contains a security module (specified in PP for the Security Module of a Smart Metering System [9]), is able to collect data of meter devices, aggregates these data based on process profiles and sends these data to 3rd parties in the backend systems. The overall architecture of this German approach is specified in the Technical Guideline 3109 (Smart Energy) of the BSI [10]. This contribution describes how this German approach secures smart meter systems on a very high level and how this approach fulfils European privacy recommendations that are listed in “European Commission Recommendation on preparations for the roll-out of smart metering systems” published on 9th of March 2012 [7].