A Cloud of Things (CoT) based Security for Home Area Network (HAN) in the Smart Grid

A smart grid is a power system that consists of communication infrastructure, IT systems, advanced actuators, and advanced monitoring building blocks for a smart city. The devices powered in smart homes have embedded systems in appliances. They are sensor-based and network-enabled and commonly referred to as Internet of Things (IoT). A Cloud of Things (CoT) virtualizes the IoT and provides monitoring and control. The CoT services in the home area network will enable a collection of applications that will use real-time data from these appliances. As always, security and privacy issues are prime since it involves private data from the home. In this paper, we propose a secure scheme for Home Area Network (HAN) based on CoT. The security scheme discusses how a device that is connected at a home is serviced from the CoT. Specifically, it illustrates how the security requirements are administered from the CoT and discusses a specific scheme for key management for the HAN.