SecureRF positioned to help
GE with 'baked-in' security
November 30, 2010
SecureRF CEO Louis Parks thinks the technology his firm developed for consumers to keep their smart grid-enabled devices in the home secure and protected should be an integral part of AMI deployments, he told us yesterday. The Westport and New Haven, Conn-based technology firm was one of 12 winners in GE's $200 million Ecomagination Challenge and plans to tap its nascent partnership with the global conglomerate to embed its products in devices throughout the home end of the smart grid.
“We believe in security before you have huge AMI rollouts to the home level,” Parks said. Details on the partnership with GE will likely be complete by year's end, but the generalities of the relationship will be brains and brains with brawn, with SecureRF providing IP for GE to use in smart appliances and other smart grid hardware, he noted.
“We have the security technology, the tool kits,” he added. “The GE partnership and money will help develop applications for smart grid.”
GE and its VC partners are investing $55 million in power grid technology firms like SecureRF to find and fund winning ideas for grid modernization (SGT, Nov-17). SecureRF is the only winner announced so far that is focused mainly on software. Also among the winners is SustainX, a start-up focused on power storage technology (SGT, Nov-23).
SecureRF's “high-performance” asymmetric (public key) and symmetric (private key) cryptography delivers authentication and data protection for wireless sensor networks, the smart grid, RFID, M2M applications and other embedded systems. With public-key cryptography, each user has a specific private key, which only the user knows, and a mathematically related public key that can be made public and freely distributed.
The 10-employee, five-year-old firm bills itself as the developer of the “world's first linear-based security methods.” SecureRF has worked for the US military on security projects, but it sees a great market for its Algebraic Eraser in the smart grid. Its public-key cryptography method is made for resource-constrained devices like meters and sensors.
What separates SecureRF from competitors is the new math it pioneered to fit security technology in small devices, Parks said.
“We are talking about using the technology for devices in the home,” and the technology can not only help protect privacy but also help keep homes secure, he added.
“Say you are in Miami and it's 100 degrees out, but your air conditioning is not running. Someone could tell through your wireless protocol that, since the air conditioner is not running, you are likely not home,” Parks said.
The person with such information might go into an unsecured wireless smart grid device and cause mischief or major damage, he suggested. “Someone could adjust things in the home, going in and turning on an oven for instance when nobody is home.”
SecureRF will not retail its technology to consumers. “The security will come baked in” when people buy smart grid devices for their homes, said Parks.
© 2010 MMI Inc.
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