Improving smart grid security using Merkle Trees

The electrical power grid forms the function foundation of our modern societies, but in the near future our grids will reach a limit due to increased demand and aging infrastructures. As a result nations worldwide have started to convert their power grids into modern, dynamic grids with improved communications and control systems. The Smart Grid will thus be better able to incorporate new forms of energy generation, as well as be self-healing and more reliable. This work looks at the security threat to wireless mesh networks (WMN) from the quantum computer attack, more specifically, we argue for the use of Merkle Trees [1] as opposed to public key encryption for authentication of devices in WMN when used on the Smart Grid. This is an ongoing work on our research on wireless network security [5, 6].