Securing Our Smart Meter Deployment

Tipmont is dedicated to the security of all of our communication systems and technology tools. Although new vulnerabilities are found everyday in all industries, we will maintain an aggressive approach to securing all of our technologies including our Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) “Smart Meter” system.

We are in the beginning stages of the installation process and we are taking the following steps to make sure our system is as secure as possible. The new AMI/Smart Meter system will undergo a system acceptance test before we go forward with the total installation. This system acceptance test will not only test the functionality of the system, but the security as well. Once we feel that it meets our strict guidelines, we will proceed with the installation.

We will not be using any form of wireless communications to send data from our meters to our collectors. Instead of using wireless communications we will be using Power Line Carrier (PLC) communication. Using this technology avoids many of the vulnerabilities inherent to wireless communications.

We have been in contact with our vendor and they are as focused on security as we are. We will continue to work with our vendor as the need arises. I feel confident that we have done our due diligence in researching all the technologies available.

By Jason Monroe, Metering Systems Supervisor