Are your Internet of Things devices and data safe?
IoT is expanding exponentially. By 2025, it’s predicted that there will be more than 21 Billion connected IoT devices. They will be in many diverse places, the home, workplace, manufacturing, health, agriculture and any location where something needs to be measured or controlled remotely.
These devices will be connected across many different types of networks – Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth, LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Networks such as LoRaWAN and Sigfox), cellular Cat-M1, cellular NB-IoT, satellite and, of course, 5G.
It’s not just connectivity that’s of interest – it’s what these devices will be asked to do. Information from IoT networks will be used to perform functions such as running smart cities, assisting health care professionals to monitor patients, aiding manufacturers to manage and operate complex industrial environments and supporting farmers to maximise yields.
The introduction of 5G technology will boost IoT penetration and use. Devices in vehicles will depend on 5G’s ultra-low latency to ensure collisions cannot occur, while manufacturers and city managers will depend on 5G’s massive machine to machine capabilities to support millions of devices per square kilometre.
IoT will become mission critical for many organisations. Many IoT applications will be “Critical IoT” applications. These applications will collect and use data for services that are life dependent or could have a major economic impact should they fail. We cannot afford to allow Critical IoT applications to fail, especially if there is a security breach.
As more and more devices connect to Critical IoT applications, creating more and more data, the security of that data becomes more and more crucial. Critical IoT device payloads will include important alerts and vital control signals that cannot be intercepted, lost or changed by an outside agent.
Additionally, the information that is collected from IoT devices is becoming a vital part of organisation’s intellectual property. Adding IoT information to public databases can create end-to-end perspectives that add significant strategic value. For organisations taking the trouble to place IoT devices in the field and collecting data, this information must be protected in transit to ensure that it is not lost to other parties.
At AllThingsEncrypted we can help you to secure your data in transit and protect your Critical IoT applications.
To find out more, contact us on info@allthingsencrypted.com. One of our consultants will be pleased to discuss your requirements.
Who can you trust to secure your IoT?
It is a well-known maxim that people are the least secure part of any security solution.
Information can leak, accidentally or otherwise. On the trip from your devices to your servers, you may depend upon any number of networks, data centre providers and application providers that have carriage of your IoT information. How can you trust these other parties not to lose, leak, or alter your data in transit, accidentally or deliberately?
And if someone’s life or livelihood depends on this, then you need to be sure that the data is secure.
Many networks and technologies have encryption in place. They have encryption on the payload and further encryption on the messages. This goes a long way to securing information, however, at any point along the path, a person may inadvertently, or advertently, allow security keys to get into the wrong hands. The impact of this could be catastrophic.
You depend on the assumption that the information that traverses between your devices and your application servers is not lost or changed in any way. With multiple and in some cases, unknown, parties in the IoT supply chain, the risk of loss of your data or a security breach somewhere on that journey increases. It’s not enough to rely on other people’s security and/or their encryption processes any more.
Governments are now preparing legislation to mandate that IoT devices and their communications are made secure. However, many solutions involve poor security practices that leave device owners and the people that depend on that device data in jeopardy. It’s no longer enough to rely on other people and other organisations to keep your data safe. If you can’t depend on other people, you need to take control of your data’s journey yourself.
At AllThingsEncrypted we can help you to secure your Critical IoT applications and protect your IoT data in transit.
To find out more, contact us on info@allthingsencrypted.com. One of our consultants will be pleased to discuss your requirements.