Intel: Security For The Internet Of Things Is More Critical Now Than Ever

Securing the increasing number of Internet of Things devices is growing more important, according to a security architect at Intel.

Sung Lee, security architect with Intel's Internet of Things Group, said during the Cambridge, Mass.-based Security of Things conference that IoT systems are poised for success as costs of sensors and bandwidth drop.

’In the past 10 years the costs of the bandwidth and processing power capacity … has come down dramatically,’ she said. ’Now we also see the costs of the sensors coming down as well. Now you can put multiple systems and have better coverage – so more devices are coming online.’

In the midst of this market maturity, customers are looking for trusted platform services across the spectrum – including device authentication, protected boot, protected storage and platform management capabilities.

’We need to harden these devices, and secure communication … but it’s hard to securely install those devices – time-consuming on-boarding slows down secure deployments,’ she said.

What customers need, she said, is a ’zero touch’ tool to on-board devices and provide essentially a plug, power and provision security on-boarding experience.

Intel, for its part, offers Intel Enhanced Privacy ID (EPID), a digital signature scheme with special properties. Through EPID, one group public key corresponds to multiple private keys, so that signatures can be verified using a group public key and no one can tell which private key signed.

’Essentially, its identity that scales for IoT, and preserves privacy,’ she said.