Addressing security challenges for the industrial internet of things

Overview

With the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0, there is a trend for applying these services and applications to a large-scale industrial area. The IoT paradigm has changed the way of interactions with the things that surround us. In essence, the IoT promises ubiquitous connection to the Internet, turning common objects into connected devices. It is predicted that there will be 50 billion connected devices at the end of the year 2022.

Over the last few years, we have been witnessing the IoT paradigm stipulating its way into the industry marketplace with purposely designed solutions. The advantages of IoT (e.g., low-cost, real-time, scalability, etc.) will certainly impact the industrial applications where most of the services depend upon automation. It paves the way for creating pervasively connected infrastructures to support innovative services and promises better flexibility, scalability, marketing, and performance efficiency.

This project will review the different architectures of IIoT, and systematically study the security challenges associated with interoperability, access control, privacy, and trust-related issues, in general. The project will also aim to identify the gaps in the state-of-the-art security techniques and requirements to determine the security services in the IIoT environment, and propose potential mitigation techniques to address these gaps.

You can find more details about the security challenges of IIoT in the papers below.

Sisinni, E., Saifullah, A., Han, S., Jennehag, U., & Gidlund, M. (2018). Industrial internet of things: Challenges, opportunities, and directions. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 14(11), 4724-4734.

Valentin, V., Mehaoua, A., & Guenane, F. A. (2020). Security Challenges and Requirements for Industrial IoT Systems. In Recent Advances in Security, Privacy, and Trust for Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) (pp. 117-136). Chapman and Hall/CRC.

Research activities

• Review existing security challenges (specifically the security services) in the IIoT systems, find the gaps, and apply potential countermeasures.
• Identify and implement a cybersecurity defence strategy to secure large-scale IIoT systems.

Outcomes

• Review existing security challenges (specifically the security services) in the IIoT systems, find the gaps, and apply potential countermenasures.
• Identify and implement a cybersecurity defence strategy to secure large-scale IIoT sysytems.

Skills and experience

Knowledge of computer networks.

Keywords

• security
• industrial internet of things

Contact

Contact Zahra Jadidi for more information.