Money trumps security in smart-meter rollouts, experts say

[Peaches]

Money trumps security in smart-meter rollouts, experts say

There are about 250 active smart-metering projects worldwide, with about 49 million meters already installed and 800 million planned for installation, according to the Meterpedia.com blog. Projects in the U.S. are being accelerated because of the $3.4 billion in stimulus funds set aside for smart-grid technologies. About 60 million smart meters will be deployed in the U.S. this year, covering about half of households, according to figures from The Edison Foundation's Institute for Electric Efficiency (PDF).

Security appears to be a casualty of this haste, experts say.

"Right now a lot of utilities are in a mad grab for money because of the stimulus package. Billions [of dollars] are on the table, so they are moving forward with metering projects and they're spending money as fast as they can," said Jonathan Pollet, founder of Red Tiger Security which tests security features in SCADA systems. "The security isn't where it should be, but the vendors aren't going to turn down orders."

Although home networks could potentially be hacked if connected to smart meters, in many cases in the U.S utilities have not yet turned on wireless-networking features.

Full story at - http://news.cnet.com/security/