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Recently I attended a cyber security briefing by a leading manufacturer of inverters for solar photo-voltaic (PV) power, a market that ARC has researched for several years. I won’t use their name. They talked about upcoming commercial and grid-scale inverters, and the great pains they were taking to make sure that these systems would be intrinsically secure and also would support secure software upgrades for the life of the system.
Internet communication is a necessity for most of these solar installations. They are often located at remote sites. Ownership of the assets, credits, and cash flows can be complicated and so operational information may need to be shared. And, while happily the plants have very few moving parts (usually only cooling fans) problems can occur and performance metrics need to be kept and monitored.
The manufacturer was well aware that his PV inverters needed to be kept secure from cyber terrorists (and also from “state actors” as we now politely call them). They are executing a thorough and
conscientious program to develop their products with this requirement. Noticing that we had been talking about the industrial market, I asked how their new cyber security technology would apply to the residential rooftop solar PV market, which is growing by leaps and bounds. Residential inverters are far smaller, but eventually there will be many, many more of them. His answer was that at present the residential market was at a price point where it could not support the additional cost of these features, but eventually they would make their way into the residential segment. That answer is understandable, but disconcerting nonetheless. Home networking is one of the biggest playgrounds for malware, since most of its installed software is never upgraded.
Analysts note constantly that the IIoT is different in that its objectives are to achieve business value and therefore it has to adopt a business-like approach in every aspect, especially cyber security. In the case of inverters, however, both the consumer and industrial IoT share the same electric grid. Its future security will depend on both segments being kept secure.
Internet communication is a necessity for most of these solar installations. They are often located at remote sites. Ownership of the assets, credits, and cash flows can be complicated and so operational information may need to be shared. And, while happily the plants have very few moving parts (usually only cooling fans) problems can occur and performance metrics need to be kept and monitored.
The manufacturer was well aware that his PV inverters needed to be kept secure from cyber terrorists (and also from “state actors” as we now politely call them). They are executing a thorough and
conscientious program to develop their products with this requirement. Noticing that we had been talking about the industrial market, I asked how their new cyber security technology would apply to the residential rooftop solar PV market, which is growing by leaps and bounds. Residential inverters are far smaller, but eventually there will be many, many more of them. His answer was that at present the residential market was at a price point where it could not support the additional cost of these features, but eventually they would make their way into the residential segment. That answer is understandable, but disconcerting nonetheless. Home networking is one of the biggest playgrounds for malware, since most of its installed software is never upgraded. Analysts note constantly that the IIoT is different in that its objectives are to achieve business value and therefore it has to adopt a business-like approach in every aspect, especially cyber security. In the case of inverters, however, both the consumer and industrial IoT share the same electric grid. Its future security will depend on both segments being kept secure.