3.1
PRINCIPLES, GOVERNANCE AND LEGISLATION
IoT security needs to be based upon fundamentally sound
cybersecurity principles. To achieve security in practice,
these principles should lead to concrete guidelines and
standards. Standards are used as a basis for evaluation
and certification. For certification schemes to be
successful, there must either be demand for certification
from customers/users or governmental legislation
mandating a minimum assurance level. Finally, since IoT
is a global phenomenon and is not limited by national
boundaries, it is essential to align country-specific
legislations and adopt a coherent global approach to IoT
security to drive standards and collaboration in creating an
IoT environment that upholds security and privacy
expectations. We identified the following challenges in this
problem space.
1. Cybersecurity and Privacy by Design – To identify and
define foundational principles to build cybersecurity and
privacy by design for IoT devices.
2. IoT Security Standards and Guidelines – To set and
harmonise IoT security standards and recommen
dations over different application domains.
3. Evaluation and Certification – To develop globally
recognised and adopted cybersecurity evaluation and
certification regimes for IoT devices.
4. Future-Proof Legislation – To develop regulatory
policies that are sufficiently flexible to deal with societal
security needs and a constantly evolving industry.
3.2
ECOSYSTEM DEVELOPMENT
As mentioned in the introduction to this document, timeto-market, usability and cost are key considerations for
IoT solutions, and the razor-thin margins for devices
leave suppliers with less to spend on security. Besides
incentivising manufacturers to implement security, it is
important to cultivate an ecosystem that fosters security in
IoT supply chains and throughout device lifecycles. This
26
study identified the following challenges in this problem
space56.
5. Responsible Industry Ecosystem – To transform to a
responsible industry that proactively implements
cybersecurity in IoT devices.
6. Supply Chain Security – To create a framework for all
suppliers and service providers involved in the supply
chain to adopt security principles and to deliver secure
IoT components.
7. Product Lifecycle Support – To implement a framework
for secure device lifecycle management and patching
that is adopted by all parties involved.
3.3
TECHNICAL REFERENCES AND STANDARDS
Finally, this study examines the security challenges in the
IoT technologies themselves: the devices and firmware, the
operating systems and applications on the devices and
back-end servers, and the communication infrastructure
connecting devices to gateways and back-ends. The
identified technical challenges are aligned with “the four
cornerstones of security” identified by Symantec57.
8. Device Identity and Root of Trust – To establish a chain
of trust from a root of trust on resource-constrained IoT
devices to develop foundationally secure devices.
9. Secure OS, Cloud and Applications – To provision
security controls in device OSes as well as cloud and
back-end applications to guarantee security within the
IoT ecosystem.
10. Secure Communications and Infrastructure – To ensure
data and source integrity in the communication
networks of resource-constrained IoT devices.
11. Security Monitoring and Analytics – To detect
vulnerabilities, anomalies and threats in IoT
deployments and to quickly respond, recover and
remediate.
56 Numbering of the challenges continues from 1 to 11 over the three problem spaces.
57 Smart Nation: Cloud Delivery of Managed Security Services, Brian Witten, Symantec. Delivered during SICW International IoT Security Roundtable 2017.
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