Research Article Application of Spritz Encryption in Smart Meters to Protect Consumer Data Lincoln Kamau Kiarie , 1 Philip Kibet Langat, 1 and Christopher Maina Muriithi 2 1 Telecommunication and Information Engineering Department, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, P.O. Box 62000–00200, Nairobi, Kenya 2 Electrical and Power Engineering Department, Murang’a University of Technology, P.O. Box 75–102000, Murang’a, Kenya Correspondence should be addressed to Lincoln Kamau Kiarie; kamaulincoln@jkuat.ac.ke Received 12 October 2018; Revised 7 January 2019; Accepted 3 February 2019; Published 26 March 2019 Guest Editor: Amir Rastegarnia Copyright © 2019 Lincoln Kamau Kiarie et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. e ongoing upgrade of the electrical power system into a more powerful system known as Smart Grid has both benefits and costs. Smart Grid relies on advanced communication and hence offers better services through improved monitoring, planning, and control. However, enhanced communications make Smart Grid more susceptible to privacy leaks and cyber attacks. Small meters collect detailed consumer data, such as power consumption, which can then become a major source of privacy leakage. Encryption can help protect consumer data, but great care is needed. e popular RC4 (Rivest Cipher 4) encryption has been implemented in the widely deployed smart meter standard—Open Smart Grid Protocol (OSGP)—but has been shown to have major weaknesses. is paper proposes the use of Spritz encryption. Spritz is an RC4-like algorithm designed to repair weak design decisions in RC4 to improve security. A test on performing one encryption took only 0.85 milliseconds, showing that it is fast enough not to affect the operations of a smart meter. Its ability to withstand brute force attacks on small keys is also significantly greater than RC4’s ability. 1. Introduction A key foundation of technological progress is electrical power. e traditional electrical power grid, which handles power from when it is generated until it reaches the customer, has remained relatively unchanged for many years. Demand for power has grown, and the needs have become more complex. To meet these rising chal- lenges, the traditional grid is being upgraded to a better system known as Smart Grid. Smart Grid integrates modern telecommunication to run operations more ef- fectively. It results in superior monitoring with less manpower to collect data, automated fault detection and correction, enhanced power delivery planning, and many other benefits [1–4]. Smart Grid is able to better meet the needs of both the supplier and the consumer. ere are less power outages, lower transmission losses, fewer undetected faults, and decreased green house gas emissions. It also allows for distributing power sources, easier integration of renewable energy sources, and more customer choices and can even increase the capacity of the existing electric power networks [5, 6]. A customer who has installed solar panels could at times produce more power than they need. ey can then sell this to a utility company, creating a more symbiotic relationship between the two. is cannot happen without effective two-way coordination. A crucial enabler for Smart Grid is the smart meter. A smart meter provides the utility company more information on electrical consumption than a regular energy meter [4]. It allows for two-way communication with benefits to both the utility and customers. Utilities collect more data to help in planning while incurring less operational costs to do so. Customers can track their usage better, and they can resell energy they generate and have more ways to participate. For these reasons, the European Union (EU) aims to improve Hindawi Journal of Computer Networks and Communications Volume 2019, Article ID 5910528, 10 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/5910528