Cybersecurity Management for (Industrial) Internet of Things: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

The internet of things (IoT) is about an integration between the physical and the cyber worlds in several aspects of peoples’ lives, with benefits of convenience and entertainment in the “smart home” domain, and process optimization, costs savings and business opportunities in the industrial, “smart city” and other domains such as power and health care, however, associated with concerns about security. Security is a must for IoT systems to protect sensitive data and critical physical infrastructure. It is estimated that the number of networked devices will reach 20-50 billion by 2020 on a global scale. Security risks can become expensive (particularly in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications) and dangerous for corporations, governments and even individuals’ lives, and strategies to combat cybercrime are being developed. However, there are 3 main challenges for solving security issues in IoT and IIoT settings: Applications operate in highly distributed environments, heterogeneous smart objects are used, and sensors and actuators are limited in terms of power and computational resources. Therefore, traditional security countermeasures do not work efficiently in IoT systems. A key security challenge in the IoT context is the increase of the overall attack surface for malicious attacks, as compared to isolated (i.e., non-connected) systems. Cybersecurity management has to increase awareness, competence levels and assess novel technologies such as blockchain and SDN (Software Defined Networking). Opportunities are offered by 5G and “green” IoT, particularly with regard to energy and CO2 emissions savings. This review article discusses the state-of-the-art, trends and developments arounds challenges and opportunities in cybersecurity management.