Patent ID: 8527653

Claim:
A front end processor system, comprising: an input/output interface configured to receive data directly from a supervisory control and data acquisition device, the received data being for at least one of monitoring and controlling an advanced metering infrastructure device; a processor being configured to: perform a protocol conversion to facilitate transfer of the received data from the supervisory control and data acquisition device to a general packet radio service gateway support node of a wireless communications network; and provide the received data to the general packet radio service gateway support node for delivery via the wireless communications network to the advanced metering infrastructure device; a provisioning manager being configured to provision at least one connection between the supervisory control and data acquisition device and the front end processor system with configuration parameters comprising at least one of a connection type, a protocol used, a source address, a destination address, and a transmission restriction; a security catalog database configured to store a security profile for the at least one connection, each security profile comprising at least one of a connection type, a supervisory control and data acquisition device characteristic, an allowed protocol, an allowed address, a data transmitted amount, and a data received amount; and a security manager being configured to: receive, in response to a particular connection of the at least one connection between the supervisory control and data acquisition device and the front end processor system being initiated, a request for security information from the provisioning manager; fetch, in response to the request for security information, the security profile associated with the supervisory control and data acquisition device from the security catalog database; and forward the security profile associated with the supervisory control and data acquisition device to the provisioning manager, wherein the provisioning manager is further configured to use the security profile to provision the particular connection.