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Information security thwarts IOT headway

Admire Moyo
By Admire Moyo, ITWeb's news editor.
Johannesburg, 20 Jul 2015
Securing the whole IOT stack in such a way as to build trust with users is a tall order, says Mark Warren, M2M solutions manager for Africa at Gemalto.
Securing the whole IOT stack in such a way as to build trust with users is a tall order, says Mark Warren, M2M solutions manager for Africa at Gemalto.

Information security remains the biggest inhibitor of the development of the Internet of things (IOT).

That's one of the biggest takeaways from the Telecoms Intelligence 2015 IOT Outlook Report which is based on 1 000 respondents, spanning operators, academics, consultants, cloud service providers and chipset manufacturers, among others.

In the study, 42% of respondents identified security as one of the top two challenges for widespread adoption of IOT.

According to market research firm Gartner, approximately 3.9 billion connected things were in use in 2014 and this figure is expected to rise to 25 billion by 2020. And while deployment is growing, Gartner says there are factors slowing down the rate of adoption. Security and privacy are among the top key concerns among enterprises, it notes.

Meanwhile, IDC notes the global market for the IOT will nearly triple to $1.7 trillion by 2020. It adds the IOT market, valued at $655.8 billion in 2014, is set to grow at a compounded annual rate of 16.9%.

The majority of responses in the Telecoms Intelligence report (44.7%) reckon between 10% and 40% of IOT data is considered 'sensitive', with 33.8% of respondents suggesting sensitive information could be carried by anything upwards of 40% of IOT data.

Asked which form of device connectivity will be the most challenging to secure in an IOT environment, the security challenge most frequently identified by the respondents (44%) is WiFi.

"As the research makes clear, IOT depends on a complex ecosystem, including providers of connectivity, device, cloud, data analytics and more," says Mark Warren, M2M solutions manager for Africa at Gemalto.

"Securing the whole IOT stack, from the device hardware and software through all the network components and the cloud providers in such a way as to build trust with users is a tall order. This makes trust critical for IOT to achieve its potential, especially in terms of its adoption by the mass market."

He adds the requisite level of trust can only be built up when the identity of participants - both human and machine - can be guaranteed.

The majority of respondents (51.8%) primarily associate the IOT with consumer technology, such as home automation (28.5%) and wearable or mobile technology (23.3%). For 16.7%, the IOT is associated with sensors, while the remaining 8.4% associate it with machine-generated big data and 15.4% with the smart city - a combined 40.5% that relates, broadly speaking, to the industrial IOT.

According to networking solutions vendor Cisco, the IOT converges an organisation's existing information technology and operational technology networks, in addition to potentially billions of sensors, devices, and other smart objects.

It points out this convergence significantly expands security challenges, due to its increased breadth and depth over existing network connectivity.

With the convergence of IT and operational technology networks, Cisco notes IOT security requires a new approach that combines physical and cyber security components. The result is improved employee safety and protection of the entire system from the outside, as well as the inside, it says.

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