Integrating Hardware Security into a Blockchain-Based Transactive Energy Platform
This work addresses cyber-security issues for product managers, energy system designers, and security architects in transactive energy systems, though it appears incremental by building on existing concepts like Two Factor Authentication and Hardware Root of Trust.
This paper tackles the problem of cyber-security gaps in blockchain-based transactive energy platforms by integrating hardware security into grid-edge devices, resulting in a framework that resolves several vulnerabilities in common blockchain frameworks like Hyperledger Fabric.
This applied research paper introduces a novel framework for integrating hardware security and blockchain functionality with grid-edge devices to establish a distributed cyber-security mechanism that verifies the provenance of messages to and from the devices. Expanding the idea of Two Factor Authentication and Hardware Root of Trust, this work describes the development of a Cryptographic Trust Center(TM) (CTC(TM)) chip integrated into grid-edge devices to create uniform cryptographic key management. Product managers, energy system designers, and security architects can utilize this modular framework as a unified approach to manage distributed devices of various vendors, vintages, and sizes. Results demonstrate the application of CTC(TM) to a blockchain-based Transactive Energy (TE) platform for provisioning of cryptographic keys and improved uniformity of the operational network and data management. This process of configuring, installing, and maintaining keys is described as Eco-Secure Provisioning(TM) (ESP(TM)). Laboratory test results show the approach can resolve several cyber-security gaps in common blockchain frameworks such as Hyperledger Fabric.