Junior Embedded Security Tester

In the development of the smart grid, millions of devices are being installed to monitor and control the electricity distribution grid: smart meters are installed in homes, remote terminal units (RTUs) in substations, electric vehicle charging poles in cities and along roads… It’s crucial for the reliable delivery of electricity that all these components are secure.

Junior Embedded Security testers evaluate if devices installed in the grid are secure. This work consists of two activities:

• Testing components: ENCS offers its members harmonised sets of requirements to procure smart meters, RTUs and EV chargers to ensure that the components they use are secure. These requirements cover all aspects needed to operate a device in an end-to-end secure manner, from encryption and authentication to access control and logging. It’s up to the security tester to assess if the devices are secure. Embedded security testers are responsible for testing these devices, and improving the tests and the testing tools.
• Penetration testing operational systems: Once a grid operator has procured devices with the right security functionality, it’s important that they are used securely. That’s why ENCS performs penetration tests on the entire chain from the central systems to the devices in the field. The Junior embedded security tester assesses the security of the deployed devices by their configuration, use and traffic.