Designing Secure and Scalable IoT Architectures

Internet of Things (IoT) systems manage billions of devices and trillions of data points that flow into one central platform. Data growth can be tremendous, and IoT systems must scale with it effectively to deal with data explosions.

Key functions essential to IoT solutions, such as collecting data on a central platform, real-time insights, scalable storage space and offline analytics, need to scale seamlessly for success. There are platforms that help manage such requirements as high scalability and security more efficiently while relieving business owners of their responsibility to do this themselves.

The architecture of IoT solutions is largely determined by the system requirements, data and load involved, and which IOT platform you are using. We present here several best practices that help achieve the desired scalability.

What is an IoT architecture?

An IoT architecture consists of both hardware and software components working in concert to form a smart cyber-digital system, interoperating seamlessly and providing the foundation upon which an IoT solution may be built. Before we dive in further, let's make one thing clear: there is no universal approach for designing IoT architectures; nevertheless, their basic layout typically remains similar regardless of solution needs.

What's under the hood of an IoT architecture?

Common IoT applications rely on a four-layer architecture:

• Device layer
• Network layer
• Service and application support layer
• Application layer

Recently, however, more connected systems have begun shifting their emphasis toward edge computing, creating a fourth tier to their four-tier architecture. Activities performed at this layer may include providing connectivity as well as filtering, aggregating, securing and processing incoming data.

Overview of IoT Architecture Steps

• Sensors and actuators

Sensors and Actuators form the backbone of IoT architecture. Sensors are physical devices that collect information about physical phenomena from their surroundings, such as temperature, chemical composition, blood pressure, heart rate, air quality, people flow or status data collected from real-world environments - in other words, sensors convert physical phenomena to digital representations.

Actuators are devices that take electrical input and convert it to physical action, like switching off lights in smart homes when nobody is around. While electrical sensors and actuators have existed for decades, other technologies like machine learning, big data analysis, 4g network architectures and 5g networking bring this collaboration to a whole new level.

• IoT Gateway and Data Acquisition Systems

A data acquisition system (DAS), which gathers raw sensor information, aggregates, stores and transfers the data to an IoT Gateway for transfer, is a data collection system. One challenge in doing so lies with providing support for multiple connectivity sensor protocols that exist on various types of devices and developing a DAS that will be hardware and OS-independent.

An IoT gateway acts as an intermediary between connected devices and the cloud, collecting and compressing the data received from DAS before sending it onward to be stored on servers in the cloud. Gateways like these serve multiple functions. They help provide security against fraud as well as protect data during transmission - among many other benefits.

Secure data travel between devices and the cloud to pass information safely between them.

Transmit control commands between the cloud and things through DAS and an internet gateway, thus consolidating and compressing an enormous volume of data before sending it onward to be further analyzed in the cloud. IoT Gateways are the conduits through which all information pertaining to IoT architecture is transmitted.

• Edge IT: fog computing

Edge IT (aka fog computing or fog network) refers to any platform which pre-processes data coming in from IoT gateways in order to minimize how much information will need to be uploaded into a cloud-based database system.

Fog is often described as a low-lying cloud, its architecture located near data sources to filter and analyze sensor-related data before sending it up into the cloud.

Although an IoT platform can be used without an Edge IT platform, it offers significant benefits for IoT projects:

• Reduce cloud network load
• Lower transmission cost for data
• Real-time response for "things."
• Provide monitoring and tracking capabilities of IoT devices and their activities

• The Cloud: Deep Analysis

A cloud is a remote system (usually hosted in a corporate data center) that acts as the processing power for data that was transferred from edge platforms or IoT gateways, providing in-depth data processing through analytics software, visualization tools, AI, machine learning capabilities, etc., for analysis.

IoT technologies provide benefits to businesses and people alike through their cloud services. Information collected should help with making critical business decisions as well as recognizing trends and patterns.

Why Do We Require IoT Secure and Scalable IoT Design?

Due to Internet of Things Solutions being deployed across a range of locations - some difficult for humans to reach - on a long-term basis, planning ahead and anticipating potential issues is absolutely key to maintaining the integrity of such applications.

Compared to IT, the Internet of Things is still in its infancy

Security procedures and standards do not regulate smart products. Some connected devices lack security measures; other times, they never intended to interact with other systems or applications in the first place.

As the security architect for IoT solutions, you will be responsible for creating an encompassing security strategy encompassing hardware, applications, communication layers and storage that aligns with your organization's security needs.

Steps to Make IoT architecture secure and Scalable

#1. Ensure IoT security is carefully considered from the outset of any project design process. A comprehensive security architecture helps ensure devices are protected in accordance with each implementation project's specific needs and demands.

Start with a security risk analysis. Your task is to identify all threats, vulnerabilities and the likelihood and impact of an attack occurring against your organization. Decide on appropriate countermeasures.

#2. This strategy continues by creating a solid base of trusted, smart device IDs and credentials, securely stored within each device during manufacturing, to guard against device cloning, data tampering, theft or misuse.

# 3. Secure Element storage to protect both physical and digital access in IoT applications such as automotive, connected vehicles, healthcare and smart grids that require extra protection.

Your defense-in-depth strategy for secure IoT architecture

Security cannot rely solely on one security mechanism. It involves envisioning yourself as an attacker and designing defenses accordingly to protect data and devices, even in the event of a breach.

These multiple defense mechanisms, collectively referred to as the in-depth defense principle, ensure that should one layer fall victim to an attacker, other mechanisms remain in place in order to limit potential damage done by an attack.

Protecting all parts of an IoT development and deployment - devices, gateways and connections, cloud layer and users - using multiple layers of defense gives your network the best cybersecurity architecture.

This approach emphasizes secure identification, authentication, access methods, privilege management and encryption of all stored data - whether stored locally on devices, gateways or cloud platforms - or transiting networks or traveling towards them.

Identification, authentication and privileges management improve confidentiality and ensure traceability while preventing fraud. A sophisticated encryption mechanism safeguards data security by rendering stolen data useless while also preventing its alteration and modification.

Maintaining data security while it travels from local systems to cloud computing solutions.

Protecting an individual device isn't enough; for true security to work, an approach should take into account what happens when this device joins a network.

Pre-integrated keys and credentials are crucial for easy data enrollment on IoT cloud platforms.

Keys and credentials help ensure IoT devices are genuine and accepted as trustworthy by legitimate partners.

Effectively, this means external platforms recognize devices instantly and establish trust quickly for future data exchange.

Advanced encryption technology safeguards data integrity and ensures that only authorized devices and applications can access their files using secure digital signature schemes.

Once data has reached external platforms, it should also be protected.

Three Key Elements for Implementing an Effective Security Strategy

Include trusted device IDs during manufacture to ensure security in IoT projects.

Lock IDs and credentials into secure hardware containers

Security-by-design is at the core of every IoT application development, and pre-embedded IDs and encryption keys play an integral part in data encryption, a digital signature of messages, and over-the-air device and security updates.

Concerns About IoT Security

Security-by-design approaches for IoT application development services aim to address these risks efficiently, effectively protecting sensitive data while managing any lack of skills needed to implement security efficiently.

Assumptions regarding security also assume that no device or network can ever be completely safe from attack; at some point in time, a connected system or device could be successfully breached.

Below we highlight three areas to take into consideration when making decisions:

• End-to-end encryption ensures all communications among IoT devices, machines and back office systems.
• Protecting data at rest from both unauthorized access and being altered.
• When working with IoT devices and data, use strong authentication and identity management methods for all interactions.

Manage the Security Lifecycle of IoT Devices

Controlling the lifecycle of security components across electronic devices and clouds to minimize attack surface is integral to creating an effective digital security strategy, yet often ignored.

Security should not be treated as an isolated event but as part of an evolving ecosystem that should support wireless technology deployments from their inception through lifecycle phases.

Add new devices and decommission older ones, Onboard to new cloud platforms, Run secure software updates, Implement regulated key renewals and manage large fleets of devices - these activities all necessitate managing identities, keys and tokens securely.

Security IoT development solutions must facilitate remote updates across large device fleets to eliminate costly service visits in the field.