Nokia Bell Labs is one of four companies guiding researchers at Carnegie Mellon’s CyLab Secure and Private IoT initiative (IoT@CyLab)
Celebrities aren’t the only ones looking for a little privacy. Due to the massive proliferation of connected devices, 5G, machine-to-machine communications and industrial automation, there is also a critical need for security and privacy for the industrial internet of things (IIoT).
Every day, machines ranging from harvesters to underwater excavators are gathering crucial industry information. This data is then used by companies to help them operate more safely, increase efficiency, monitor quality and improve production, among other things. But in the wrong hands, this same information could be used for corporate espionage or tampered with to cause equipment failure, production delays or worse.
Bringing both its industry and networking knowledge to the table, Nokia Bell Labs is one of four companies guiding researchers at Carnegie Mellon’s CyLab Secure and Private IoT initiative (IoT@CyLab). “By helping Carnegie Mellon’s researchers identify and prioritize the key security issues within industrial IoT networks, we aim to accelerate everyone’s progress toward the best solutions,” said Marina Thottan, head of Nokia Bell Labs End-to-End Network and Service Automation Lab.
Now wrapping up its second year, the initiative has made significant progress in trustworthy platforms, autonomous healing networks and accountability. This includes the development of advanced network sniffer technology that recognizes the unique fingerprints of diverse industrial IoT devices to more accurately identify and trace anomalies. In addition, the initiative has created leading-edge machine learning techniques that automatically identify malicious inputs to black-box systems against which the systems must be protected.
"As industrial environments become more and more digitally connected, it's extremely important that we ensure that those connected devices are safe and secure from new threats that emerge in the digital realm," said Vyas Sekar, a co-director of IoT@CyLab.
Moving forward, the initiative plans to not only expand some of its existing projects, but also undertake research aimed at improving the security of IoT in smart home and teleworking environments. The work created through the IoT@CyLab initiative is available for release under permissive open-source licenses. For more information, visit the IoT@CyLab website.
