www.emfnews.org www.emfnews.org The company works with various banks and electronics companies to ensure that everything from TV set-top boxes to credit card terminals are secure. For meter makers and their suppliers, they should think of smart meters as a similar piece of consumer electronics when it comes to fraud protection and privacy, said Jun. In the case of scramblers for cable boxes, the theft amounted to more than $4 billion annually , according to researchers at Pennsylvania State University. For criminals who leverage connected networks for financial gain, scale is the name of the game. For online identify fraud, an estimated 70 percent is related to organized crime , according to CBS News. In the case of smart meters, there will have to be millions available to make any organized criminals interested in trying to hack them, so now is the time for meter companies and their suppliers to build in the proper security. Currently, electricity theft in the US is estimated at $6 billion, according to a report by IEEE. However, that is far lower than in some other countries, where stealing power happens all the time. In British Columbia, electricity theft is used to mask grow operations for marijuana; this was one of the major drivers to implement smart meters. In India and Brazil, stealing electricity is rampant. www.emfnews.org www.emfnews.org