Avoiding the Internet of Insecure Industrial Things
It addresses security vulnerabilities in industrial IoT systems, such as power grids and factory control systems, to prevent incidents like DDoS attacks, but is incremental in framing existing issues.
The paper examines emerging security risks in the industrial internet of things, using the smart energy supply chain as a case study to identify four key concerns and regulatory responses like the EU NIS Directive and GDPR.
Security incidents such as targeted distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on power grids and hacking of factory industrial control systems (ICS) are on the increase. This paper unpacks where emerging security risks lie for the industrial internet of things, drawing on both technical and regulatory perspectives. Legal changes are being ushered by the European Union (EU) Network and Information Security (NIS) Directive 2016 and the General Data Protection Regulation 2016 (GDPR) (both to be enforced from May 2018). We use the case study of the emergent smart energy supply chain to frame, scope out and consolidate the breadth of security concerns at play, and the regulatory responses. We argue the industrial IoT brings four security concerns to the fore, namely: appreciating the shift from offline to online infrastructure; managing temporal dimensions of security; addressing the implementation gap for best practice; and engaging with infrastructural complexity. Our goal is to surface risks and foster dialogue to avoid the emergence of an Internet of Insecure Industrial Things