Securing Every Kilowatt: Safe Charging, Confident Journeys

Understanding the EV Charging Threat Landscape

Attackers may pry open enclosures to steal copper, skim cards, or plant rogue hardware. Thoughtful design, tamper‑evident seals, intrusion sensors, and rapid response protocols reduce downtime and protect customers from dangerous, costly sabotage.

Understanding the EV Charging Threat Landscape

Default credentials, exposed OCPP endpoints, and flat networks enable lateral movement from a charger to back‑office systems. Strong authentication, segmentation, and patch discipline block remote exploits before they cascade into bigger operational impacts.

Physical Security by Design

Lighting, Cameras, and Natural Surveillance

Bright, uniform lighting, visible cameras, and clear sightlines raise perceived risk for offenders and increase comfort for drivers at night. Place charging pedestals near activity, not isolation, to make tampering conspicuous and deter opportunistic attacks.

Locks, Tamper Sensors, and Environmental Hardening

High‑security locks, tamper loops, sealed conduits, and weather‑rated enclosures reduce attack opportunities. Add conformal coating, corrosion protection, and anti‑ram bollards to defend against harsh climates and physical impact, keeping systems resilient and reliable through adversity.

Procedural Controls for On‑Site Work

Require check‑in, access badges, and work orders for every visit. Use dual‑custody keys, maintenance windows, and closed‑loop verification so technicians leave evidence of changes, enabling audits and quick rollback when anomalies are discovered.

Device and Firmware Hardening

Secure Boot, TPMs, and Signed Firmware

Establish a hardware root of trust so only verified firmware runs. TPMs or secure elements anchor keys, while measured boot and cryptographic signatures block downgrade attacks and persistent malware implant attempts at the edge.

Over‑the‑Air Updates with Guardrails

Use staged rollouts, maintenance windows, and automatic rollback to prevent bricking. Require code signing, verify integrity on‑device, and maintain a clear version baseline, ensuring fixes reach the field quickly without adding operational risk.

SBOMs and Vulnerability Management Rhythms

Maintain SBOMs in CycloneDX or SPDX formats and track dependencies for CVEs. Set service‑level objectives for remediation, test patches in sandboxes, and document exceptions so nothing silently lingers beyond an acceptable risk threshold.

Network Segmentation and Protocol Security

TLS Everywhere and OCPP 2.0.1 Security Profiles

Use TLS with modern ciphers and mutual authentication for charger‑to‑cloud links. OCPP 2.0.1 security profiles enforce stronger protections, while certificate pinning and strict validation prevent session hijacking and malicious man‑in‑the‑middle manipulation attempts.

Zero Trust Segmentation for Chargers and Backends

Apply least privilege between chargers, payment services, and operational tools. Isolate management planes, block east‑west traffic by default, and use policy‑driven firewalls so a compromised node cannot pivot across critical systems unexpectedly.

Certificate Lifecycle for ISO 15118 Plug & Charge

Manage contract and provisioning certificates via e‑Mobility PKI with rotation, revocation, and secure storage. Validate OCSP or CRLs promptly, retire lost credentials, and maintain auditable chains so drivers enjoy seamless, trustworthy authentication automatically.

Identity, Payments, and User Trust

Provision unique keys at manufacturing, protect secrets with HSMs or secure elements, and enforce mutual TLS for every session. Hardware‑anchored identity prevents spoofed chargers from impersonating infrastructure or extracting sensitive operational information.

Identity, Payments, and User Trust

Offer ISO 15118 Plug & Charge, app‑based sign‑in with FIDO2, and privacy‑aware RFID. Provide fallback options for accessibility, while rate limits and anomaly checks suppress abuse without punishing legitimate drivers during busy hours.

Monitoring, Detection, and Incident Response

Telemetry That Matters

Collect charger health, firmware versions, reboot counts, connector states, authorization failures, and OCPP anomalies. Centralize logs in a SIEM, correlate with network alerts, and visualize trends so small issues are noticed before outages.

Anomaly Detection and Thresholds

At a coastal site, technician Maya noticed 3 a.m. reboots every Tuesday. Tighter thresholds and certificate checks revealed scripted probing. Quick containment blocked escalation, and the schedule anomaly became an early‑warning signature.

Preparedness Drills and Clear Playbooks

Define roles, escalation paths, and communications templates. Run tabletop exercises simulating charger compromises, lost certificates, or payment fraud. After‑action reviews drive improvements so the next incident is shorter, clearer, and less disruptive.

Privacy, Compliance, and Communication

Collect only what operations require, pseudonymize identifiers, and set retention timers. Limit access through role‑based controls and audit trails, reducing exposure so accidental leaks or breaches reveal as little personal data as possible.

Privacy, Compliance, and Communication

Map controls to ISO 27001, IEC 62443, UL 2900, NISTIR 7628, and NIS2 where applicable. Evidence your program with policies, risk registers, and metrics that leadership understands and auditors can verify efficiently.