Cloud dashboards, connected meters and mobile apps are replacing standalone prepaid vending points across Africa’s utilities. Each addition widens what a utility now has to defend.
“Metering, in fact, is more connected than ever before,” says Lance Hawkins-Dady, board chairman of the STS Association, the global body behind the Standard Transfer Specification (STS) used in prepayment metering.
“When utilities are dealing with cloud-based solutions, meters that are connected, mobile devices connecting into the ecosystem, cybersecurity will always be a threat.”
More than 80 million STS meters are deployed worldwide, across 100 countries, many installed long before cloud connectivity entered the picture. That legacy footprint doesn’t disappear as utilities modernise — but the risks attached to it change shape.
If you have a cloud-based solution, put the right controls in place.
Encryption built for the smart era to secure your metering
The STS Association treats its security layer as something to keep upgrading, not a fixed standard from three decades ago.
“What the STSA have done is made sure our specification has evolved to include state-of-the-art encryption — 128-bit, 168-bit encryption,” Hawkins-Dady says. “We have very stringent key management, vending key creation and operational controls that we’ve implemented.”
That security layer now sits alongside DLMS, the open standard for smart metering data exchange that the STS Association has partnered with through the DLMS User Association. Combining the two, Hawkins-Dady says, gives utilities a stronger transaction layer than either standard offers alone.
Of relevance: Metering experts chart a path from legacy to smart metering
Security is not just a specification
A strong specification, Hawkins-Dady says, is only part of the picture.
“Your specifications don’t just control your security,” he says. “Users who operate the technology also need to be cognisant. If you have a cloud-based solution, put the right controls in place.”
That puts some of the responsibility on utilities themselves — access controls, patching and staff training sit alongside whatever encryption the specification provides.
No rip-and-replace required
None of this, Hawkins-Dady stresses, requires utilities to abandon three decades of prepaid investment. “STS was never built around a legacy technology. It was built for future expansion,” he says.
The partnership with the DLMS User Association lets utilities keep collecting revenue through STS while adding smart metering’s data collection, analytics and remote device control. “There is no need to choose one over the other,” Hawkins-Dady says.
Affordability is a condition utilities have to work within too.
Hawkins-Dady says customers can’t be charged more for electricity itself under modernisation — any additional cost sits on connectivity, not the tariff — while gaining visibility into usage that basic prepaid meters never offered.
Legacy prepaid infrastructure still has a role, Hawkins-Dady says, particularly where cost or connectivity limits how fast a utility can move. “It still protects the utility — it still guarantees that the utility will collect its revenue,” he says.
For utilities weighing the shift to smart metering, the more pressing question isn’t which standard to adopt. It’s whether their cybersecurity practices are keeping pace with how connected their metering has already become.
