Today, partners in the newly formed ManySecured Gateway Project announced their plans to lead an industry-wide approach to addressing the growing challenges of IoT security, with the network gateway at the core. The ManySecured Gateway partners will develop publicly available specifications and developer resources aimed at hub vendors, in a bid to deliver AI-IoT-secured deployments which are resilient to attack throughout their lifecycle. The ManySecured project partners will also produce the first intelligent gateway demonstrator based on those specifications.
What’s the problem?
Cybersecurity is a major challenge to IoT vendors for many technical and commercial reasons and with a lack of standards and legal requirements, the extent to which security measures are deployed varies greatly. A key element in many IoT deployments is the hub or gateway, and this provides a natural opportunity to centrally locate best practice security features which protect IoT devices and the networks they connect to. Cybersecurity is dynamic by nature and whilst measures can be taken to mitigate known security risks at the design stage, vulnerabilities emerge and evolve with time. This means that cybersecurity defences also need to be dynamic and maintained in use throughout the lifecycle of the gateway. The upgrading of cybersecurity works best if it can be delivered intelligently – for example by leveraging many sources to identify vulnerabilities, and update mitigating features as quickly as possible across all gateways designed with agile capabilities.
This is both the challenge and the opportunity the ManySecured Gateway Project seeks to address – by using collaborative methods in technology and the marketplace, IoT security can leverage operational technology intelligently to evolve with threats and work at scale. ManySecured partners will produce a demonstrator as part of the project, and publicly available specifications with supporting resources which will allow gateway vendors to take advantage of the security schema in their own products.
Key partners in the project include NquiringMinds, Cisco, the University of Oxford and the IoT Security Foundation. The joint project is co-funded by the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK.
Nick Allott, CEO and founder of NquiringMinds said “a smarter, secure gateway is an essential weapon in the battle to secure IoT devices. The gateway is unique in having broad visibility of device activity. The use of smarter AI powered techniques has the potential to transform the way we think about and implement IoT security”.
Chintan Patel, Chief Technologist, Cisco UK & Ireland added “IoT has the potential to transform industries, but its widespread use and impact across multiple sectors is being held back by security and trust concerns. ManySecured will focus on greater intelligence at the gateway and aims to demonstrate a collaborative approach between the gateway, edge device and across applications to help solve real IoT challenges facing businesses in the UK.”
John Moor, Managing Director and co-founder of the IoT Security Foundation said “cybersecurity is a team sport, we are much stronger applying defence together. This principle can be extended with technology and there is a real need to focus on this now that the IoT era is becoming mainstream. IoTSF is determined to catalyse and help deliver fit-for-purpose security and the ManySecured project offers the opportunity to do this collaboratively, at scale and across applications”.
Professor Andrew Martin, University of Oxford said “IoT Security highlights many open research challenges. Our partners in the ManySecured Project will help to keep that research focussed on new and emerging real-world problems. It will also be a source of great material for teaching the next generation of practitioners, engineers, and designers.”
