Encryption

As implied by our name, security is central to everything we do. Security means protecting equipment and data from accidental damage or deliberate interference. This provides protection for the supplier, thereby maximising revenue, while helping ensure that consumers receive correct bills and are credited correctly for payments.

Since the 1980s we have used the best methods available for protecting data transfers to and from meters. Some of our earliest meter designs used data encryption as well as sophisticated data authentication to enable metering data to be transferred between different parties without risk of corruption and while maintaining confidentiality.

Our Liberty prepayment system for electricity and gas uses Triple DES encryption in addition to the MAA-based key system that protects all our meters. This ensures that vend codes can be used only once and only in the target meter and can be freely transmitted via a variety of media without compromising the supplier or the consumer.

Some of our intelligent credit (i-Credit) meters support self-billing via Authenticated Billing Codes (ABC) eliminating the need for meter reading visits. The encrypted billing code contains all the information necessary to generate an accurate bill and is secure against tampering or corrupted transmission.