EDITOR’ S QUESTION
HOW IS THE ONSET OF IoT AFFECTING HOW CIOs APPROACH NETWORK SECURITY FOR 2016 AND BEYOND?
In February 2016 Gartner released a report which identified the top 10 Internet of Things technologies for 2017 and 2018 – at the core of this report was IoT and security of the network. With the advancement of the virtual, networks are having to deal with an ever-growing number of external security breaches, intrusions and downtime.
The IoT introduces a wide range of new security risks and challenges to the IoT devices themselves, their platforms and operating systems, their communications, and even the systems to which they’ re connected. Security technologies will be required to protect IoT devices and platforms from both information attacks and physical tampering, to encrypt their communications, and to address new challenges such as impersonating“ things” or denial-of-sleep attacks that drain batteries. IoT security will be complicated by the fact that many“ things” use simple processors and operating systems that may not support sophisticated security approaches.
“ Experienced IoT security specialists are scarce, and security solutions are currently fragmented and involve multiple vendors,” said Nick Jones, Vice President and distinguished analyst at Gartner.“ New threats will emerge through 2021 as hackers find new ways to attack IoT devices and protocols, so long-lived“ things” may need updatable hardware and software to adapt during their life span.”
Low-power, short-range IoT networks Selecting a wireless network for an IoT device involves balancing many conflicting requirements, such as range, battery life, bandwidth, density, endpoint cost and operational cost. Low-power, shortrange networks will dominate wireless IoT connectivity through 2025, far outnumbering connections using widearea IoT networks. However, commercial and technical trade-offs mean that many solutions will coexist, with no single dominant winner and clusters emerging around certain technologies, applications and vendor ecosystems.
Low-power, wide-area networks Traditional cellular networks don’ t deliver a good combination of technical features and operational cost for those IoT applications that need wide-area coverage combined with relatively low bandwidth, good battery life, low hardware and operating cost, and high connection density. The long-term goal of a widearea IoT network is to deliver data rates from hundreds of bits per second( bps) to tens of kilobits per second( kbps) with nationwide coverage, a battery life of up to 10 years, an endpoint hardware cost of around $ 5, and support for hundreds of thousands of devices connected to a base station or its equivalent.
The first low-power wide-area networks( LPWANs) were based on proprietary technologies, but in the long term emerging standards such as Narrowband IoT( NB- IoT) will likely dominate this space.
Regional network security spend in a GCC-wide sector set to grow from
$ 340 million to $ 1 billion
by 2018
( Source: Frost & Sullivan report)
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