Security: SD-WAN’s promise to IoT

The relevance of IoT continues to grow for enterprises of all sizes. In this listicle, we cover some facts, some gaps, some maps, and some wraps about IoT security.

Fact-o-Factory:

• There are around 27 billion IoT devices across the globe as of 2020.

• We have witnessed 2.9 billion cyberattacks on the IoT device in 2019.

• IoT cyberattacks rise 300% YoY.

• 97% of respondents to Microsoft’s IoT Signals survey cited security as a major concern when implementing IoT.

• A recent forecast by IDC states that there will be 41.6 billion connected IoT devices, or “things,” generating 79.4 zettabytes (ZB) of data in 2025.

Security Challenges with IoT devices:

• IoT devices face a common issue of being resource-constrained. They do not contain the computing resources necessary to implement strong security.

• Majority IoT devices are in “set it and forget it” category. They are placed once and for all in the field or on a machine. Hardly any security patches or upgrade goes into these devices.

• Manufacturer’s and IoT developers are generally thriving to release their product as early as they can and lose out on investing time and money in incorporating security features.

• There is no single agreed-upon security framework for IoT devices.

• The infamous default passwords are a major challenge with IoT security, although various standardization bodies now are putting strict password guidelines.

Attack Surface of IoT devices

• Devices/Hardware Interface– Vulnerability in memory, firmware, physical interface, web interface, and network services can be exploited by hackers.

• Communication Channel– Various protocols used for communication of IoT devices like Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) and Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) do not check the data or payload that they transport, which means that the information can be really anything, posing data validation issues on the connected systems.

• Application, Services, and Software– Injection attacks, Vulnerable application libraries, DoS, message interception, and many more types of attacks are seen over the years on various IoT devices both in consumer and Industry IoT space.

Legacy WAN vs IoT

• Legacy WAN does not provide the application traffic isolation required by the IoT causing major security concerns to Industries extensively using IoT.

• Cloud Access is a challenge with Legacy WAN/MPLS based connectivity.

• Bandwidth issues start showing up when Industrial IoT deployment surges, as legacy WAN was designed for legacy devices and next-generation technology requires next-generation WAN.

• Lack of Agility and Resiliency is a common issue cited by various teams across industries after IoT device deployment using legacy WAN.

SD-WAN promises to IoT at Edge:

• Hybrid WAN

• Traffic Optimization

• Central Orchestration

• Link Quality Monitoring

• Cloud/SaaS Simplification

ScaleAOn for Secure IoT

Everything from the SD-WAN promise and more:

• Go-indirect with ScaleAOn and leverage seamless interoperability between IoT devices.

• Utilize the power of a true SDN forwarding engine that can cater from large enterprise Datacenters to IoT devices.

• Consolidate the low range IoT traffic through a ScaleAOn device. Decrease the attack surface of your Industrial IoT (IIoT) deployment.

• Bird’s eye visibility of your infrastructure highlighting the performance attributes of the network and applications in real-time.

• Network Segmentation using the power of Network Groups to keep your IoT traffic isolated from the other enterprise applications.

• Cloud Traffic steering capability for intensive content inspection.

• ScaleAOn helps in the identification and prioritization of network traffic by application.