Challenges in Assuring Security and Resilience of Advanced Metering Infrastructure

The modern energy sector depends on advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) systems responsible for gathering, measuring, and analyzing enormous amounts of energy consumption information to make important decisions related to energy services including billing, monitoring, distribution, load balancing, and more. However, the introduction and integration of these new technologies presents a wide range of complex challenges. Assuring the confidentially, integrity, availability, and accountability of sensitive consumer information, and the safe, resilient, and reliable delivery of critical services, is among the top priorities for governments and utility providers. In this paper, we describe our experience in developing assurance cases for arguing about the security and resilience of AMI systems, and the emerging regulatory and policy challenges and lessons learned in the development of advanced tools and methods for achieving cyber-assurance for the energy sector, and critical infrastructure in general.