Introduction
Much has been written about the rapidly emerging, disruptive impact being detected on every aspect of how machines and their operational technology (OT) communicate with one other, with the underlying information technology (IT) platforms that typify today’s IT environments, and with the humans (consumers, operators, decisions makers) who in one form or another use, control, or are even controlled by those machines. This disruption, commonly referred to in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT), was first mentioned by Kevin Ashton, co-founder of the Auto-ID Center at MIT, where a global standard system for RFID and other sensors was created [5]. As currently defined by ISO/IEC, the Internet of Things (IoT) is “an infrastructure of interconnected objects, people, systems and information resources together with intelligent services to allow them to process information of the physical and the virtual world and react [6].”
Although referred to as an “Internet of Things”, in reality, what is emerging is a series of consumer, industrial, public sector and hybrid networks that are collectively using today’s Internet backbone to create closed-loop networks for connecting the operational technology of cyber-physical devices (the things) with sensors, controllers, gateways and services. The created networks can be cloud-based as well as traditional on-premise based, and typically use specialized IoT platforms to provide services designed to optimize the performance of the devices using a variety of techniques and approaches. As with most disruptive technologies, these platforms are being developed by a wide range of solution providers drawing on their own experiences and promoting their own existing solutions repackaged to address new requirements. However, to realize the true potential of this emerging technology, new approaches beyond performance optimization are necessary. This White Paper attempts to address these new approaches and the requirements involved and to articulate them in a concise and concrete manner. The aim is to assist decision-makers, architects, developers, and implementers in changing the character of their IoT initiatives from ones based on simple transformation to ones involving dramatic shifts in the way that devices are identified monitored, and controlled. Also addressed is the way the devices and the networks they belong to are secured, and how multiple interdependent systems collaborate with each other.
Background
In today’s IoT, applications mainly concentrate on collecting performance and environmental data from sensors attached to devices, and either performing rudimentary analyses in a proximity network close to the devices or passing the data via some form of network to an on-premise enterprise or cloud platform. For many IoT applications with a limited remote device control capability, and which are largely used for data retrieval, archiving or data use limited to static or batch processes, these models often suffice.
However, such a limited approach fails to take any real advantage of this new disruptive technology, provides little return on investment (ROI), and raises doubts in the minds of executives who must make resource allocation decisions. New IoT platforms are emerging which offer advanced services such as predictive maintenance, visualization, logistic tracking systems, home automation, public surveillance or telematics, and remote device configuration and management. These services collectively offer significantly greater value to those faced with investment decisions by providing new insights into every aspect of an enterprise’s core operations and by affording opportunities to reduce the company’s total cost of operations, furnish new or enhanced industry, consumer and public sector services or open new markets. Nevertheless, these emerging enhancements still raise significant doubt among decision-makers as to the potential ROI on IoT transformations.
Additionally, these new approaches raise almost as many issues as they tend to address. Security becomes exponentially more important as devices that heretofore were isolated and thus highly protected, are now potentially exposed to significant risk. Data privacy concerns – especially in the consumer IoT space – are significantly heightened, as more and more personal information is captured and shared by the devices and by the various networks that connect to them. Much equipment in today’s industrial and public sector environment – from manufacturing to logistics to healthcare and every other industry vertical – is outdated and may not be digitized or capable of connecting to an IoT network, and thus investment in new equipment is significantly more difficult than in the typical consumer space where devices are changed out every few years.
Moving forward
Today’s solution providers are making significant progress in developing advanced services and platforms designed specifically for IoT. These new platforms and services are naturally expanding the disruptive potential of IoT, however, much more progress is still required. To realize the full disruptive opportunity that IoT offers, advances in today’s IoT platforms and the IoT devices, sensors, actuators, and networks they support are essential. More sophisticated data analysis techniques using deep learning and artificial intelligence will require significant enhancements employing new approaches. Autonomous devices such as self-driving cars and fully recombinant plant equipment are creating unparalleled demands for system responsiveness to support real-time behavior.
This in turn requires the ability to sift through massive amounts of data streamed in real time and stored in memory for low or zero latency access. Realtime IoT applications need real-time platform support that allows for sophisticated processing within the proximity networks as well as across the full network range. Cross-industrial application domain usage of data, (e.g. data generated in the smart home industrial application area is used in the automotive domain), can enable the development of new business models. Horizontal industries, such as telecommunication operators, and vertical industries, such as car manufacturers, can pursue partnerships and profit from such new business models.
As IoT networks become ever more mission-critical, issues such as resiliency, safety, security, dynamic composition, and semi- or even fully automated recombination and/or reconfiguration of the devices become critical. Not only will responsiveness drive the development of novel IoT platform architectures, it will also generate new and unimagined opportunities and requirements.
These requirements and the advanced platforms, devices, networks and architectures that support them will only be possible with corresponding new and enhanced standards for data semantics, contextualization, transformation, and transmission, for analytic engine information sharing and for security, connectivity, interoperability and every other aspect of what constitutes the emerging IoT smart ecosystem. The advanced platforms in this emerging ecosystem hereafter referred to as smart and secure IoT platforms, require the even greater capability to enhance and expand the capabilities of companion smart IoT devices and the smart networks that connect them.
Scope
This White Paper addresses the following key questions:
- Which key capabilities are offered by existing IoT architectures and which limitations and deficiencies can be identified?
- Are existing capabilities sufficient to make envisioned new applications such as Smart Cities real? If not, which additional or enhanced capabilities are required? How should a smart and secure IoT platform look?
- Are existing technologies sufficient? If not, do we only need appropriate enhancements and adaptations of existing technologies to meet the requirements of tomorrow’s applications? Alternatively, do we also need new technologies?
- Which international standards are already established or are currently under investigation? Which, if any, additional standardization efforts are needed to support IoT applications?
- Who should identify the requirements for – and define, publish, and maintain – new standards?
- What should the role of the IEC be?
Structure
This White Paper is structured as follows:
- Section 2 provides an overview of the current state of IoT and describes the fundamental capabilities of existing IoT platforms to include data correlation and information retrieval, connectivity and communication, integration and interoperation, security, privacy, and trust. It further describes the most common architecture patterns used to build today’s IoT platforms and provides a brief overview of existing reference architectures. This section concludes by providing insights into existing IoT systems, enabling the identification of the main deficiencies and limitations of those systems.
- Section 3 systematically identifies and explains encountered deficiencies related to key topics such as security, integrability, and composability as well as advanced analytics and visualization.
- Section 4 highlights future IoT use cases covering three different application domains – industrial, customer, and public sector.
- Section 5 provides an overview of the smart and secure IoT platform and of smart devices and smart networks. It further explains the technical challenges expected to emerge in creating the smart and secure IoT platform.
- Section 6 focuses on several of the key next-generation enabling technologies necessary for realizing smart and secure IoT platforms.
- Section 7 addresses the current standards landscape and identifies standardization requirements for smart and secure IoT platforms.
- Section 8 rounds up this White Paper by identifying specific standards development recommendations for IEC and other standards-related organizations, such as governments.
Recommendations
Based on the findings contained in this White Paper, a number of opportunities exist to move IoT forward and to help achieve the smart and secure IoT platform.
General recommendations
All SDOs, consortia, geopolitical entities, and others involved in IoT definition, development, deployment, and operation should publically adopt as a guiding principle the desired future IoT standardization ecosystem environment described in Section 7.1.2. All SDOs, consortia, geopolitical entities, and others involved in IoT definition, development, deployment, and operation should look for opportunities to foster increased levels of cooperation and collaboration. Governments should increase funding support for unrestricted research into the various technical requirements identified in Section 6. ITU, IEEE, and 3GPP should take the lead in pushing 5G finalization and deployment until 2018. Governments and the private sector should come together to create a joint cooperative security framework to enable the exchanging of cyber threat intelligence between interdependent systems, identification of future security enhancement opportunities, and identification of potential needed standardization activities.
Recommendations addressed to the IEC and its committees
The IEC, as one of the globally recognized de jure standards organizations, is in a unique position to drive the IoT forward and help make the smart and secure IoT platform a reality. Accordingly, the IEC should take the following actions:
- Publically adopt as a guiding principle the desired future IoT standardization ecosystem environment described in Section 7.1.2
- Work with recognized leaders of the organizations described in 7.1.2 to establish a formal MoU recognizing the proper roles of named SDOs and consortia, government entities such as the European Community, and individual governments. The MoU should include the establishment of an overarching MoU Management Board of participants to collaborate as much as possible towards creating the desired environment
- Review the findings and recommendations contained in Sections 5, 6 and 7 and identify specific activities to be undertaken by the IEC Standardization Management Board (SMB)
- Urge the ISO/IEC JTC 1 leadership to assign responsibility to ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC 32, in cooperation with WG 9 and WG 10, to develop requirements and standards for IoT: – Information exchange models – Semantic metadata definition standards and models – Data exchange models and interfaces and related standards – Metadata annotation models and interfaces – Contextualized information models – Metadata context standards
- Urge the ISO/IEC JTC 1 leadership to assign responsibility to ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC 27 to review the security requirements identified in Sections 4, 5, 6 and 7 and initiate activities as appropriate § Urge the ISO/IEC JTC 1 leadership to assign responsibility to the appropriate SC/WG to start a standardization activity on autonomous data exchange to define – the profile that controls the autonomous data exchange profiles (ADECP) – the system mechanism to manage and enforce the ADECP – and the interfaces and mechanisms needed in IoT devices, edge devices and clouds to enforce the ADECP
- Work with government entities to increase the level of participation and identification of requirements so that IEC deliverables address their concerns
- Endorse greater ITU-R radio frequency allocation
About KSRA
The Kavian Scientific Research Association (KSRA) is a non-profit research organization to provide research / educational services in December 2013. The members of the community had formed a virtual group on the Viber social network. The core of the Kavian Scientific Association was formed with these members as founders. These individuals, led by Professor Siavosh Kaviani, decided to launch a scientific / research association with an emphasis on education.
KSRA research association, as a non-profit research firm, is committed to providing research services in the field of knowledge. The main beneficiaries of this association are public or private knowledge-based companies, students, researchers, researchers, professors, universities, and industrial and semi-industrial centers around the world.
Our main services Based on Education for all Spectrum people in the world. We want to make an integration between researches and educations. We believe education is the main right of Human beings. So our services should be concentrated on inclusive education.
The KSRA team partners with local under-served communities around the world to improve the access to and quality of knowledge based on education, amplify and augment learning programs where they exist, and create new opportunities for e-learning where traditional education systems are lacking or non-existent.
FULL Paper PDF file:
IoT 2020: Smart and secure IoT platformBibliography
Year
2020
Title
IoT 2020: Smart and secure IoT platform
Publish in
International Electrotechnical Commission
PDF reference and original file: Click here
Nasim Gazerani was born in 1983 in Arak. She holds a Master's degree in Software Engineering from UM University of Malaysia.
Professor Siavosh Kaviani was born in 1961 in Tehran. He had a professorship. He holds a Ph.D. in Software Engineering from the QL University of Software Development Methodology and an honorary Ph.D. from the University of Chelsea.
Somayeh Nosrati was born in 1982 in Tehran. She holds a Master's degree in artificial intelligence from Khatam University of Tehran.
Sara Ghyiasi a dedicated researcher with a focus on Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), Cloud computing, distributed computing, Internet of Things (IoT), Software-Defined Networking (SDN), and information systems. Her passion for exploring the intersections of technology has led her to contribute significantly to these fields.
