IoT Security In Depth: From The Device To The Cloud

By forging new links between the cyberworld and the physical world, IoT creates a paradigm shift that dramatically increases the scope of security. As organizations rush to adopt IoT, novel security challenges abound, amplified by an enormous diversity of hardware, software, services, and deployment locations. In fact, while 91 percent of IoT decision-makers report plans to increase the number of their connected devices by more than 15 percent within two years, they cite security as the greatest concern for deploying IoT technologies.

Threats to devices, applications, services, connections, and data must be addressed holistically across the IoT infrastructure to create a consistent security posture across IoT devices, the edge, the cloud, and the connections between all those elements. IoT leaf devices range from simple, single-function sensors and actuators to serverclass systems. IoT gateways establish intelligence at the network edge, for purposes that range from performing on-site analytics to protecting vulnerable endpoints. Public and private clouds provide centralized, elastic storage and compute power as well as platform as a service (PaaS) services to scale on demand and provide resiliency in the event of failures.

Compounding the difficulty of securing the IoT environment is a lack of comprehensive IoT expertise within most organizations. Instead, there are typically separate domain experts in information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT), without overarching management to coordinate them. In fact, IoT decision-makers cite a lack of centralized management and executive awareness as the top challenges of securing IoT.

That organizational complexity mirrors the complexity of the IoT infrastructure. It is challenging to integrate the diverse elements of the IoT environment and create a consistent security posture across them. At the same time, the sheer scale of many IoT deployments—including potentially millions of endpoints—creates the need to reimagine the strategic approach to securing IoT infrastructures. The importance and gravity of securing IoT infrastructures are increased because protecting critical infrastructure, lifesaving medical devices, and major economic forces is at stake.