Need PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) to secure IoT Data

All together IoT is data interface game with huge biased source and destination oriented seamless platform. New businesses are built every day based on the connection of various devices, users, and back end services. For any IoT application, it is crucial to protect data, user privacy, and safety every time and on every step. On Architecture level we need to protect and secure to build trust on IoT platform. Now for any IoT platform data flow from sensor to node and then cloud directly or via Hub/Gateway and finally user can access data from cloud in both the way data pushing and data pulling. Any scenario data security is required, In other way data security require for embedded device side, network side and cloud side.      

Secure data is all about Identity data either Node side, Network side or Server side. it means all connected devices and services must have trusted identities. The IoT industry moving towards adopting Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) -- a mechanism for distributing and naming public encryption keys. A PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) provides cryptographically secure, unforgettable, theft-safe identities and is the best available security technology for large-scale distributed systems.

The basic security measures with IoT PKI, devices and services can be empowered with

1.    Authentication- Strong authentication ensures that only approved users and devices connect to the network

2.    Encryption- Certificate enable encrypted communication between devices and services

3.    Integrity- Digital signature proves the origin integrity of data and software.

Security implementations are not simply about encrypting data, they also ensure the proper deployment and configuration of security across the various layers of communication within individual devices and across integrated systems. Secure IoT deployments should ensure that the basic security requirements needed for data confidentiality, data integrity, and data accessibility are properly configured as part of the solution. PKI is the backbone of Internet of Things security since its started through the use of digital certificates on Transport Layer. PKI inherently delivers the basic and essential elements of privacy in communications using encryption and authentication. PKI’s unique role in the history of data and identity security and its ability to facilitate the secure transfer of information across networks makes it the clear solution for IoT service providers to ensure proper data security, authentication, and mutual trust. Digital certificates have been used to secure networked devices, such as servers, routers, printers, and fax machines for decades.

The difference from IoT and traditional network systems is the diversity of the network devices, however, the common layers of the connected ecosystem found in traditional networked devices makes PKI a strong solution for securing the IoT. With PKI, IoT solutions can enable direct authentication across systems in a decentralized handling of authentication. PKI is secure and cannot be replicated when using cryptography engine. PKI has the capability to address the security needs of at-rest and in-transit data. PKI also facilitates the verification of proper availability and access for protocol and application configuration, or interaction with data stored in the device, thus ensuring the complete coverage of data and system confidentiality, integrity, and availability. PKI solution providers are uniquely positioned to address the security needs of the growing IoT community. PKI is an open standard, free to be adopted, implemented, customized, and extended. This makes PKI the clear choice for organizations that are adding connectivity to systems, services, and smart devices.

To implement PKI, SDR (Secure Device Registration) relies on strong mutual authentication between gateway device and cloud registration server. The device registration involves a binding of user and device authentications, while allowing the ease of use experience by use of convenient mobile applications then it will assist the process. To ensure the integrity of the certificate based TLS authentication devices and servers are provisioned with certificates from a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) as a root of trust for the ecosystem. Devices should be equipped with secure storage for the purpose of storing factory-provisioned keys and assisting the TLS authentication as a session key generation, using secure APIs. Secure device registration is the core hardware device identification with same will be use for reference no for PKI to process unique certificate.

So need to focus on more to more hardware crypto engine cryptographic engine enabled security device to use in IoT base design then to implement PKI based on TLS interface.