To protect their IoT applications from attack, organizations have tried for years to adopt to the IoT the same cyber-security strategy which has proven to be highly effective for traditional IT infrastructure – Defense in Depth.
A Defense in Depth strategy creates layers of protection that make it harder for an attacker to affect an IoT application and easier to detect, isolate and remediate successful attacks. Yet, because IoT applications encompass edge devices, wireless connectivity and cloud services, implementing an IoT security Defense in Depth strategy is complicated, and until now has often required the creation of a large, dedicated IoT security team to execute effectively. This makes it hard for companies to roll-out secure IoT applications -- especially small and mid-sized companies with limited resources and IT security teams.
However, in 2020 companies will increasingly adopt new solutions for implementing IoT Defense in Depth strategies that use security orchestration to protect IoT applications. These new solutions, including Octave, Sierra Wireless’s all-in-one edge-to-cloud solution for Industrial IoT, orchestrate the deployment and management of layers of protection around all elements of the IoT application, including its edge devices, network connectivity and cloud.
Devices are securely provisioned in the factory with unique credentials for securing communication from device to cloud (layer 1), and the device firewall is configured by default to only allow secure communication with the Octave cloud (layer 2). Finally, the devices are automatically enrolled in a private APN ensuring internet-based attackers cannot intercept or manipulate the encrypted traffic from the device to the Octave cloud platform (layer 3).With these three layers of protection automatically in place, IoT developers can focus on enriching their application instead of managing security parameters.
With IoT security orchestration solutions like Octave, companies will be able to implement robust Defense in Depth strategies using much smaller dedicated security teams, and thus lower both their initial and ongoing security costs in 2020.
As IoT security orchestration solutions become more well-known and adopted, expect small and medium-sized businesses to increase their investment in IoT initiatives now that they know they can cost-effectively secure these applications, and IoT innovation and deployment to accelerate accordingly.
Start with Sierra to learn more about how to use security orchestration to simplify protection of your IoT applications from cyber-attacks.
