IoT will be a $520 Billion Industry by 2021 – Whether Deploying It or Investing in It, It’s Critical That You Understand How It Will Be Secured
The Internet of Things, or IoT as it is more commonly known, is still a relatively young technology innovation – although the concept of computers “talking” to one another is a well-established and accepted paradigm across virtually every industry. Today, from your laptop, to your smart phone, to your Fitbit, to your car, to your home security system – virtually everything is now “talking” to you and/or to each other. In fact, many experts’ estimates put IoT in the 20-30 billion devices range within the next few years.
In order to communicate, move, share, process and leverage the data that each of these 20-30 billion devices is generating, each must be connected to clouds and edge gateways via IP networks. With use cases spanning virtually every industry around the world, the possibilities for its applications are endless. Unfortunately, so are its cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Well, perhaps not endless, but certainly substantial. And with business, legal and regulations compliance on the line it’s not a problem that can be ignored.
Consequently, IoT security remains today’s most pressing adoption rate inhibitor. This is because IoT devices are commonly deployed outside an organization’s traditional enterprise boundaries. This makes protecting the devices and their associated data particularly challenging. Adding to the challenge is the fact that these endpoints are designed for lightweight data transmissions—not enterprise-class security protocols.
Software-Defined Perimeters (SDPs) have been gaining traction in the area of IoT and for good reason. SDP’s flexible, fine-grained security has proven itself able to excel in IoT settings as well as any type of cloud environment. Lightweight and portable enough to be installed in the most inexpensive of endpoint devices, this solution leverages several measures to conceal data transmissions from anyone but the sender or receiver. By leveraging SDP, organizations can protect endpoint devices, edge gateways, and centralized clouds to realize IoT’s advantages, while virtually eliminating its risks.
What’s at Risk?
There is some debate among security professionals regarding which aspect of IoT security is more problematic – the fact that data originates and is transmitted outside of physical enterprise security boundaries, or that many of the current devices were not engineered for modern security protocols. The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle. However, even if all the devices were kept behind traditional cybersecurity perimeter defenses like Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) or firewalls, the increasing numbers of data breaches indicate that would not make much difference.
One need only read recent headlines to know that VPNs are highly vulnerable. This makes them unsuitable for IoT use cases because organizations do not own the physical infrastructure in the public cloud to properly implement gateways there. In addition, it’s problematic for VPNs to match the scale of the containers frequently deployed in the IoT, while the connections themselves are unreliable.
Another challenge is that the diminished hardware, storage and compute capacity of endpoint devices make them inherently vulnerable (usually the result of the need to conserve costs). The value and efficacy of IoT deployments is based on deploying as many devices as possible across distributed settings for fast data transmissions for real-time insight — like linking fuel dispensers in the oil and gas industry for visibility into fuel consumption and asset monitoring. Costs would rapidly escalate if organizations had to equip each endpoint device with the capabilities of more expensive hardware, which would in turn limit the ability to distribute these devices, and consequently the value they would produce.
Discreet Data Transmission by Way of Isolation
The ability to enjoy a discreet data transmission by way of isolation is an intrinsic benefit of SDP. That is to say, SDP overcomes the limited cybersecurity capabilities of endpoint devices and the fact that they’re outside typical perimeter security controls. SDP enhances the overall security of distributed networks by fortifying both ends: the devices and edge computing gateways, and public and private centralized clouds.
Using the oil and gas industry example again, where the business, legal and regulations compliance ramifications are significant, organizations can directly transmit data from containers in fuel pumps to the cloud for analytics by employing lightweight gateways on each end. These gateways are securely introduced to one another by a matchmaking service in the cloud via random port generation. After the gateways are introduced, secure micro-tunnels can be implemented between the gateways that enable invisible communication that’s nearly impossible to detect.
The SDP approach’s security advantages are considerable: data transmissions are discreet, micro-tunnels leverage enhanced UDP for security by obscurity, and the random port generation makes it difficult to ‘stake out’ ports — yet, the business value might be even greater.
The network isolation enabled by this method guarantees that there are distinct transmissions for payments, rewards programs, and fuel monitoring (and the like in other use cases)—greatly mitigating the possibility of Distributed Denial of Service attacks and lateral movement that can jeopardize the IoT. This way, the IoT’s transmissions don’t tax additional network resources for communicating between locations at different gas stations, for example. Additionally, the ability to continuously monitor them drastically increases the capacity to follow federal and state regulations regarding fuel leaks and environmental hazards. Finally, the micro-tunnels’ direct connections enable gas stations to comply with additional regulations such as the upcoming EMV chip card secure payment compliance deadline.
Compelling for Any IoT Use Case
As undeniable as the above use case is, it’s critical to understand that an SDP approach provides these same core cybersecurity benefits of cloaked data transmissions for any IoT use case. For instance, the security benefits that could be appreciated in a financial services organization is also compelling. However, the previous example is so eminent because it attests to the comprehensive value of this approach, which doesn’t just secure data coming from IoT devices to the cloud, but also helps stabilize the overall networks supporting these operations.
Each of the various types of data common to these and other use cases—such as payment information, customer rewards data, and data about the fuel itself—can be isolated and directed to its destination without involving the other types of data. Moreover, the micro-tunnels delivering the data have automatic failover capabilities for inherent resiliency that’s critical in low latent IoT applications. If ever one was to go down for any reason, data transmissions would failover to another to minimize downtime and increase overall network stability.
IoT Is Big Business – So, Pay Attention to How It’s Secured
There really isn’t an industry that IoT doesn’t touch today. Its big business. Huge. Bain predicts the value of the IoT market will grow to about $520 billion by 2021, more than twice the $235 billion spent in 2017. So, whether you are deploying it or investing in it, its important you understand how it will be secured.
Organizations must address the basic cybersecurity issues that are impeding its progress. As discussed, the most pressing concern today is that of security. This is not an unreasonable concern. According to Risk Based Security, during the first six months of 2019, there were a total of 3,813 security breaches – that’s about 20 per day.
SDP enables organizations to facilitate trustworthy cybersecurity in a manner lightweight enough for endpoint devices and optimal for data transmissions stemming from remote locations. The ideal implementation of this method reinforces the line of business advantages the IoT is hailed for, while stabilizing the data transmissions of organizations’ networks in general. This approach can make a critical difference in turning the IoT’s projections into concrete reality.