Itron Networked Solutions, Inc.

Silver Spring Networks, Inc.

Michael C Stjohns

Raj Vaswani

Cristina A Seibert

Benjamin N Damm

Aditi Dubey

Nelson Bruce Bolyard

Wilson Chuen Yew Yeung

Aditi Hilbert

Robert G Boehm, Jr

Cristina Seibert

To provide overall security to a utility management system, critical command and control messages that are issued to components of the system are explicitly approved by a secure authority. The explicit approval authenticates the requested action and authorizes the performance of the specific action indicated in a message. Key components of the utility management and control system that are associated with access control are placed in a physical bunker. With this approach, it only becomes necessary to bunker those subsystems that are responsible for approving network actions. Other management modules can remain outside the bunker, thereby avoiding the need to partition them into bunkered and non-bunkered components. Access to critical components of each of the non-bunkered subsystems is controlled through the bunkered approval system.

Physically secured authorization for utility applications

Securing the manufacturing supply chain with digital certificates. A token is coupled to a manufacturing station and enabled via a personal identification number. The token includes a counter limiting the maximum number of certificates to be signed, and compares a serial number of a digital certificate to a tracked serial number. In some embodiments, the token is linked to a particular manufacturing station once the token is enabled.

Systems and methods for securing the manufacturing supply chain

Growing community of inventors

Germantown, MD, United States of America

Michael C Stjohns