A hierarchical key management system applied in cloud-based smart grid

It is an emerging but promising paradigm to integrate smart grid into cloud computing, and the integration performs in the cloud based hierarchical multi-user data-shared environment. However, security issues such as data confidentiality and user authority may arise in the paradigm. Differing from other ordinary cloud based paradigms, the cloud based smart grid scheme owns a strict hierarchical management structure where the user with higher privilege level can get the data stored in all the clouds that are with lower privilege levels, on the contrary, users with lower privileges cannot get anything from the higher-privilege clouds. In order to provide safe and secure grid operation, a hierarchical key management system is proposed in this paper. The novel scheme mainly focus on ensuring the users with legal authorities to get corresponding sensitive data and to restrict illegal users and unauthorized legal users get access to the data, which makes it extremely suitable for the cloud computing based smart grid paradigm.