msterdam, the Netherlandsand Munich, Germany–2 Oc tober, 2017 –Digitalizationand distributed power generation is fundamentally changing energy systems that have been centrally supplied so far. Solar pho tovoltaic assets, electric vehicles, electrical heating and cooling or battery s torage have to be connected in to an intelligent power system. At the same time, they must be protected against the growing number of security threats. Infineon TechnologiesAG (FSE: IFX / OTCQX: IFNNY), IBM, GreenCom Networks and icentic have joined forces to develop and provide scalable solutions for securely connecting these distributed assets in to the electrical infrastructure.
At the European Utilities Weekin Amsterdam, 3 -5Oc tober 2017, the partners will demonstrate a first pro totype solution atthe GreenCom booth 5R26. The solution is based on Infineon’s OPTIGA™ embedded security chips built in icentic’s ICEHUB®connectivity products to authenticate devices that are connected to the Energy IoT platform of GreenCom.
Traditionally, solar pho tovoltaic inverters, heat pumps or batteries have not been designed to be digitally connected for moni toring, control and analytics purposes. As a matter of fact, just connecting them to a digital infrastructure allows their management, but opens the doors for security threats. All the more so as access to data is happening at the infrastructure level as well as in the backend.
According to a recent study (BDEW; EY)88 per cent of energy infrastructure suppliers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland judge IT-security as the greatest challenge for a digitalized energy infrastructure.Yet the majority of the connected devices are not properly secured: attackers could be enabled to remotely compromise thedevice completely, control its flow of power and even cause a shut-down of the energy network
The joint offering of the partners addresses utilities and energy service companies that aim to offer new digital energy services to their cus tomer base in an innovative yet secured way. It also gears towards device manufacturers that either want to embed security in to their energy-relevant assets from the beginning or plan connectivity and security upgrades to enable additional value-added services of their installed devices.
GreenCom Networks’ Energy IoT platform integrates relevant analytical skills from IBM to forecast and optimize the usage of connected assets. IBM’s Hybrid Intelligence capabilities combine big data analytics, defined hardware-based security at the edge and GreenCom’s platform backend. icentic supplies and manages the required ICEHUB®connectivity solution to connect distributed devices in a future-proof and secure way. The embedded security solution of Infineon’sOPTIGA family helps to securely authenticate the connected devices as well as to secure data transmission.