Int. J. Information and Computer Security, Vol. 11, No. 3, 2019 233 Copyright © 2019 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Lightweight R-LWE-based privacy preservation scheme for smart grid network Aarti Amod Agarkar* Symbiosis International (Deemed) University, Lavale, Mulshi Taluka, Pune, Maharashtra 412115, India Email: pratibha26@gmail.com *Corresponding author Himanshu Agrawal Department of Computer Science and Information Technology, Symbiosis Institute of Technology, Symbiosis International (Deemed) University, Lavale, Mulshi Taluka, Pune, Maharashtra 412115, India Email: himanshu.agrawal@sitpune.edu.in Abstract: Privacy preservation is one of the important research challenges in IoT applications. In one such IoT application; smart grid network, billing information and energy profiling information of the customer may be collected, aggregated, and forwarded to control centre for further analytics. Based on the research findings, traditional public key cryptography is not secured against quantum attacks. Our study is motivated by the recent developments in the lattice-cryptography schemes. This paper presents a lightweight R-LWE lattice-cryptography-based scheme to sign and encrypt message traffic in smart grid. Security analysis suggests that proposed scheme preserves the privacy of customer. Performance analysis shows that proposed scheme cause less communication overhead as compared to traditional public key cryptography yet maintain parallel with NTRU-based scheme and outperforms both formats of public key cryptography in regards to computation overhead. Keywords: internet of things; smart grid network; security; privacy preservation; lattice cryptography; R-LWE; learning with error over ring; public key cryptography; quantum attack; lightweight scheme. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Agarkar, A.A. and Agrawal, H. (2019) ‘Lightweight R-LWE-based privacy preservation scheme for smart grid network’, Int. J. Information and Computer Security, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp.233–254. Biographical notes: Aarti Amod Agarkar received her Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science and Engineering from Walchand College of Engineering, Sangli, Maharashtra, India in 2001. She has completed her Master of Engineering in Computer Science and Engineering from Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, Maharashtra, India in 2009. Currently, she is pursuing her PhD from Symbiosis International University, Pune, Maharashtra, India. Her research interests include wireless sensor networks and smart grid communications. She has 17 years of teaching experience and presently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Technology of Sinhgad College of Engineering, Pune, Maharashtra, India. She