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Smart Grid & Energy: Secure the Critical Infrastructure of Tomorrow

Smart grids, energy generation systems, and utility infrastructure are becoming smarter, more distributed, and more connected. From substations and smart meters to DER (Distributed Energy Resources) controllers, EV charging stations, and industrial gateways, the shift to digital control brings greater efficiency, but also heightened vulnerability to cyber and physical attacks.

FortifyIQ delivers cryptographic security tailored to the needs of energy systems: robust protection against side-channel and fault injection attacks, efficient enough for embedded deployments, and certifiable under top global standards.

Security Challenges in Smart Grid and Energy Systems

The modern energy landscape introduces new risks across all levels of the infrastructure:

Physically Exposed Devices

Remote substations, pole-top sensors, and smart meters are physically accessible to attackers, making them prime targets for side-channel and fault-injection attacks aimed at stealing keys or bypassing secure firmware.

EV Charging Infrastructure

These stations combine public accessibility, payment processing, grid connectivity, and remote management, making them attractive targets for both fraud and grid-level disruption. Tampering with authentication, firmware, or billing systems at the edge can lead to service interruption, user impersonation, and non-compliance with cybersecurity mandates. As regulatory attention increases around e-mobility security (including through ISO 15118, OCPP and NIS2), protecting EV stations with physically resilient cryptography becomes essential.

Decentralized and Distributed Systems

With increasing DERs and grid edge devices, cryptographic keys and update mechanisms must remain secure even in isolated or bandwidth-limited conditions.

Legacy and Long-Lived Devices

Power infrastructure has long upgrade cycles. Devices deployed for 15–30 years must be protected against emerging threats, including quantum computing and physical tampering, without requiring hardware replacement.

Operational Reliability and Low Power

Devices must maintain real-time responsiveness and low energy usage, making lightweight, low-latency cryptographic protection essential.

Compliance Pressure from Global Regulators

Critical infrastructure operators face rising requirements from standards including IEC 62443, IEEE 2030.5, NERC CIP, the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) and Radio Equipment Directive (RED), and the EU NIS2 Directive. Physical resilience of cryptography, against side-channel and fault injection attacks, is essential for compliance.

Why FortifyIQ ?

FortifyIQ delivers efficient, certifiable, and physically hardened cryptography, designed to meet the security and performance demands of modern energy systems.

What are FIPS 140-3, Common Criteria, and SESIP

These internationally recognized certifications validate the security of cryptographic systems and hardware components across critical industries:

  • FIPS 140-3 (Federal Information Processing Standard): A U.S. government standard for cryptographic modules, required in military, finance, and federal systems. It evaluates resistance to side-channel and fault-injection attacks across four levels of assurance.
  • Common Criteria (ISO/IEC 15408): A global standard for evaluating the security of IT products, widely adopted in defense, telecom, and critical infrastructure. It includes rigorous testing against physical attack vectors (e.g., AVA_VAN.5).
  • SESIP (Security Evaluation Standard for IoT Platforms): A modern certification tailored for connected and embedded devices, including IoT. It enables scalable, efficient evaluation of security features — mapping to other frameworks like FIPS and Common Criteria, and aligned with EN 303 645 and EU Cyber Resilience Act requirements.

FortifyIQ’s cryptographic security IP and software libraries are designed to support compliance with all three standards, including the highest assurance levels. Our countermeasures are proven to resist advanced physical attacks, enabling secure certification even for resource-constrained devices.

FIPS 140-3 (all levels), Common Criteria including AVA_VAN.5, SESIP, and NIS2 compliant

Proven resistance to side-channel and fault injection attacks in both software and hardware crypto implementations

Ultra-efficient PPA (power, performance, area), ideal for constrained devices such as smart meters and industrial controllers

Delivered as soft macros (synthesizable RTL), portable across foundries and nodes, with seamless integration into ASICs, SoCs, and secure MCUs

No custom instruction sets or proprietary interfaces; FortifyIQ AES, HMAC, and RoTs integrate just like standard crypto IP

AI model protection for DER optimizers and grid analytics engines

FortifyIQ Provides:

  • Cryptographic solutions aligned with IEC 62351 for secure energy management and advanced metering infrastructure.
  • Resistance to side-channel and fault injection attacks critical for energy distribution systems.
  • Support for secure OTA updates, device authentication, and encrypted communications.
  • Security Compliance evidence and documentation for FIPS 140-3, Common Criteria, and SESIP at all levels, including CC AVA_VAN.5.

Chip vendors serving energy OEMs can validate their silicon’s physical attack resistance using FortifyIQ’s simulation tools pre- and post-silicon.

FortifyIQ Security Solutions for the Energy Sector

Software Crypto Libraries

For utility operators and OEMs needing security upgrades for existing devices and resource-constrained systems with no hardware security:

  • Software-only hardened AES-256 and HMAC-SHA-512, and asymmetric public key cryptography, including PQC.
  • Adds secure boot, firmware validation, and encrypted comms to deployed MCUs.
  • No hardware upgrade required. Ideal for meters, grid edge controllers, or DER devices.
  • Enables compliance with FIPS 140-3, Common Criteria AVA_VAN.5, SESIP, and NIS2 via OTA updates.
  • Deployed in high-throughput environments, including legacy platforms.

Hardware Crypto IP for Energy Device OEMs

For companies building next-generation smart meters, gateways, or controllers:

  • Hardened crypto IP cores (AES, HMAC, PKA, PQC)
  • PPA rivals non-hardened crypto in many use-cases.
  • Enables native SCA/FIA resistance in SoCs powering energy infrastructure.
  • Ideal for smart meter silicon, DER control SoCs, and energy-hardened MCUs.

Root of Trust IP for Full Lifecycle Security

For OEMs and integrators securing the supply chain, OTA updates, and device authentication:

  • Drop-in Root of Trust and Cryptobox IPs
  • Protects cryptographic keys, firmware updates, AI models, and credentials.
  • Compatible with Caliptra for compliance-ready integration.
  • Low-power and efficient for embedded energy use cases.
  • Secures endpoint and gateway trust anchors, critical for NIS2-aligned architectures.

Use Cases:
Securing Energy Infrastructure

FortifyIQ protects the digital foundation of smart energy:

Smart Meters

Prevent firmware tampering and secure usage data.

EV Charging Stations

Secure exposed public interfaces against payment fraud, takeover, and regulatory non-compliance.

Substations & Grid Control Units

Resist fault injection and ensure software integrity.

DER Systems (e.g., Solar Inverters, Wind Turbines)

Protect AI-based control logic and encrypted OTA updates.

Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS)

Safeguard credentials, firmware, and load-balancing algorithms.

Microgrids

Ensure trusted communications and grid balancing under physical attack scenarios.

Utility Gateways & SCADA

Embed hardened crypto for secure protocol handling and long-term key protection.

Secure, Validated, and Ready for the Grid’s Future

FortifyIQ enables energy OEMs and infrastructure operators to:

  • Comply with global security mandates, including FIPS 140-3, SESIP, Common Criteria AVA_VAN.5, IEC 62443, and EU NIS2.
  • Secure distributed infrastructure against physical attacks, even on constrained devices.
  • Protect AI and cryptographic workloads with minimal energy impact.
  • Upgrade legacy field devices securely, via software.
  • Prepare for quantum-safe transition using our PQC-enabled crypto libraries and IP.

Let's Secure the Future of
 Energy

From substations to smart meters, FortifyIQ helps secure the most vital infrastructures with physical attack protection, post-quantum readiness, and full lifecycle assurance.

Contact Our Experts
Fortify’s AES security evaluation by SGS

“Summary. The leakage analysis (Welch t-test) on over 30 million traces did not show statistically significant first- and second-order differences between trace sets with fixed and random inputs. The template-based DPA analysis, on the pseudo-random trace set for the profiling phase (15 million traces) and on a sub-set of 300k fix input traces for matching phase targeting the first-round S-box output, and template attack on ciphertext, did not indicate any potential information leakage.”

” The results for the soft IP presented in the report were obtained on the TOE which is the basic hardware implementation of the soft IP without additional levels of security (e.g. that are present in a secure silicon layout). Therefore the internal strength of the soft IP itself was evaluated. This indicates that the investigated features and parameters of the soft IP implementation should be robust against SCA and fault injection attacks in different implementations including ASIC. Nevertheless, according to the Common Criteria rules, the strength of the final composite product must be evaluated on its own.”

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