A CONNECTED WORLD

IoT HAS BECOME CENTRAL TO ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY ROADMAPS WITH GROWING EXPECTATIONS. HOWEVER, IT HAS ITS FAIR SHARE OF CHALLENGES. HERE IS WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW.

During this pandemic, digital technologies have been key to keep business running, and IoT is playing an important role in the fight against

Covid-19. It has enabled many new use cases in healthcare and is being used widely in supply chain tracking, contactless payments and remote access. The ability to communicate data without manual intervention and automate business processes makes IoT an ideal platform for organisations to adapt to the new normal.

Covid-19 has proven to be a key driver for digital transformation in 2020. Companies have realised the need to be fully digital by having, for example, online channels, automated processes, better integration, and getting real value from existing and new data. “IoT is a special use case part of the overall digital transformation journey, which got more attention due to the current pandemic’s nature. Many customers seeking a safer workplace started considering deploying IoT solutions i.e., remote worker monitoring, safe distance monitoring, smart buttons for workers & patient monitoring, etc.,” says Feras Juma, IOT & Integration Solutions Manager, Software AG.

He says Software AG has witnessed a surge in requests from its clients for IoT, mainly focused around those specific Covid-19 use cases, which is a great indicator that companies started to consider IoT in general as a key strategic area in their roadmap.

Morey Haber, CTO & CISO, BeyondTrust, shares a similar opinion: “We have seen an acceleration in adoption of IoT due to COVID-19 but that has been driven by changing consumer buying behavior to accommodate the new work-fromhome and e-learning environments, rather than directly by companies and traditional office environment use cases.”

He continues to say that companies are seeing an acceleration in cloud technologies and the adoption of SaaS solutions in order to support employees at home. In addition, employees working from home are purchasing more IoT technology to modernise their homes and home offices to provide a more complete and rewarding remote working experience. This includes everything from digital personal assistants to help with calendaring and reminders to cameras and security systems that are internet connected to secure their homes.

Ammar Enaya, regional director – Middle East, Turkey & North Africa (METNA) at Vectra, says IoT solutions are now mainstream and whilst there may be several new use cases driven by COVID-19 related changes, the exponential growth in IoT — and associated smart devices and industrial automation — is driven by a broader set of factors including the significant efficiency gains and new value creation opportunities these technologies afford.

Trends to watch

In a report published last year, McKinsey notes that IoT is a business opportunity, not just a tech opportunity. The research firm points out that IoT is seen as a technology challenge, and IoT efforts are driven by CIOs. “But we see time and again that maximising the economic impact of an IoT effort requires a broad set of changes to business practices as well,” the report says.

Over the next 12 months, industry experts predict an accelerated adoption of IoT in healthcare more than

Feras Juma

LEGACY DEVICES CAN POSE A CHALLENGE IN ATTAINING ADEQUATE IOT SECURITY. WITH 85% OF THESE INTERCONNECTED OUTDATED DEVICES HAVING LIMITED UPDATE AND PATCHING CAPABILITIES, INADEQUATE SECURITY PRACTICES CAN QUICKLY UNDERMINE THEIR VALUE BY ERODING THE TRUST AND SAFETY OF END-USERS.

any other vertical. “Many connected devices are now available in the market to monitor and analyse healthrelated data. Due to the pandemic, the workload of healthcare systems has increased around the world, and healthcare providers are looking to telemedicine as a way of providing outpatient care during the crisis. Adoption of IoT in telemedicine, such as remote patient monitoring and

Morey Haber

5G enabled medical robots to scan human temperature, deliver drugs, and disinfect hospitals wards, will be implemented in the new normal of healthcare,” says Sébastien Pavie, Regional Vice President for Cloud Protection and Licensing activities at Thales.

Another key trend is the growing role of AI in IoT applications and deployments, and many expect these two powerful technologies to merge.

IoT has many core pillars, and analytics is one of them, according to Juma from Software AG. There are different type of analytics; visual, streaming, and predictive ‘AI’. AI plays an important role across many use cases within the industrial domain. For example, predictive maintenance where you need to monitor the health of running machines like compressors, and predict a future failure in order to avoid a production line downtime which can lead to a huge operational cost. Having an IoT platform that can facilitate the execution of a predictive model -anomaly detection model while monitoring real-time machine data - would deliver a great business value, he points out.

IoT alone is a simple technology based on a minimalistic approach to an operating system and interface. It is essentially a network-enabled “toaster.”

Haber from BeyondTrust says the brains and AI technology come from

Ammar Enaya

Sébastien Pavie

Giuseppe Brizio

the cloud and requires computing and correlation power. Without the cloud, IoT can only perform the minimal functions it has programmed in. For example, turning on a light. However, for devices like a digital personal assistant (Alexa, Siri, Cortana, Nest, etc.), the cloud provides the necessary AI in order for it to function and even anticipate our questions.

“While this merger is not directly on the IoT device, I do expect more functions to be distributed to IoT devices themselves in the future to solve common use cases that do not need internet access. Nest Thermostats using Eco Mode and Learning Modes are a good example of this hybrid approach,” Haber adds.

IoT security issues

As we adapt to the new normal and IoT becomes a more significant part of our daily lives, hackers will also be probing IoT products for vulnerabilities.

IoT devices are often targeted because of the valuable data they hold, says Pavie from Thales. Legacy devices can pose a challenge in attaining adequate IoT security. With 85% of these interconnected outdated devices having limited update and patching capabilities, inadequate security practices can quickly undermine their value by eroding the trust and safety of end-users. IoT devices can also be used as a gateway into a company’s network, enabling hackers to unlock the door to the kingdom of the company’s secrets, or simply wreak havoc by taking over the devices themselves, he adds.

“IoT, with 30 billion connected devices in 2020 and a projection over 60 billion by the end of 2025, is at the intersection between the digital and the real world, and therefore very appealing for hackers, malware and ransomware. To prevent unauthorised access to connected devices, it’s paramount to change the manufacturer’s default password as soon as the device is received and then protect and manage credentials according to related security best practices,” says Giuseppe Brizio, CISO EMEA, Qualys.

Ennaya from Vectra says we have to acknowledge that IoT designers have a chequered history of building secure devices. As IT and OT networks increasingly become connected, there is a greater need for detecting hidden threat behaviours inside networks, before cyberattacks have a chance to spy, spread and steal.

“It’s a phenomenon we’ve seen in Vectra’s own analysis from inside operators of critical national infrastructure. For example, attackers have tested and mapped-out attacks against energy and utility networks for years. These slow, quiet reconnaissance missions involve observing operator behaviours and building a unique plan of attack,” he says.

He cites the example of an attack that shut down Ukraine’s power grid in 2015 was reportedly planned many months in advance by skilled and sophisticated cybercriminals. This underscores the importance of identifying hidden attackers inside enterprise IT networks before they cause damage to the industrial control systems (ICS) and steal information related to the critical infrastructure. These threat behaviours reveal that carefully orchestrated attack campaigns occur over many months.

Juma from Software AG advises CISOs to consider IoT security end to end, across the whole spectrum, from devices, to network, to associated gateways & relays, to the platform and all the way to the IoT application itself that consumes and presents the IoT data. “For example, devices should be secured physically, and transmit their data securely over the network with unique device credentials along with proper data encryption in place. On the northbound side, applications need to communicate with the IoT platform again securely (using authentication, and also SSL certificates for advanced security and data encryption). In summary, you shouldn’t compromise on security, and you have to look at your IoT data flow end to end, not just on your devices connectivity end.”