Industrial IoT, IoT Security
Article | July 12, 2023
Understanding the Impact of IoT Device Management
The Internet of Things (IoT) industry is growing exponentially, with the potential to become limitless. The current range of existing and potential Internet of Things devices is in itself quite enormous. This also gives businesses an opportunity to pay more attention to the newest technologies.
In ascenario with rapidly increasing numbers of devices, manual management of devices becomes close to impossible, laced with human errors. Moreover, keeping an eye on hundreds of devices one by one to make sure they work the way they should is not an easy task to undertake.
Businesses at the outset of IoT adoption are most often unaware of why they require a device management platform.This is precisely why a device management platform is so crucial.It can effectively connect toall of theconnected devices and get the required information from them in the right way.
An effective device management platform can turn out to be the vital aspect that will define the success of any small or large IoT implementation project. Such a platform would ideally allow organizations to manage their internet-connected devices remotely.
"If you think that the internet has changed your life, think again. The IoT is about to change it all over again!" — Brendan O'Brien, Chief Architect & Co-Founder, Aria Systems.
Why Do Organizations Need an IoT Device Management Platform?
An effective IoT device management platform offers simplified provisioning, centralized management, and real-time insights into all existing devices and integrations to help organizations stay on top of their deployment.
Device management platforms help you keep a check on the growing number of devices while keeping errors at bay, with your growing number of connected devices. It would ensure that you have a clear dashboard and an alerting system as an effective supporting system. In addition, getting involved with IoT device management platforms can also help you in a number of other ways.
It acceleratestime-to-market and helps reduce costs
The management platform enables secure device on and offboarding
It also streamlines network monitoring and troubleshooting
IoT simplifies deployment and management of downstream applications
It mitigates security risks
Evaluating the Future of IoT Device Management
It is predicted that the world will have more than 100 billion IoT-connected devices by 2050. The future potential of the IoT is limitless, and the potential is not about enabling billions of devices together but leveraging the enormous volumes of actionable data thatcan automate diverse business processes.
Critical Aspects of the IoT's Future
The critical aspects of IoT predictionsare fast impacting several categories all across the globe, ranging from consumer to industrial.
IoT Companies and a Circular Economy
IoT firms are assisting in the development of a future with less waste, more energy efficiency, and increased personal autonomy. A connected device system, on the other hand, must be feedback-rich and responsive, and activities must be linked via data in order to be sustainable. Ways to achieve a responsive and actionable system include:
Extending the use cycle with predictive maintenance.
Increasing utilization and reducing unplanned downtime.
Looping the asset for reuse, remanufacture, or recycle.
Common Billing and Revenue Challenges
We are currently moving toward a future where everything from cars to household machines and home security will be sold by manufacturers as subscription services. This will result in organizations selling IoT subscriptions looking for new ways to managebilling and revenue for their business model.
Service diversity
Data monetization
Complex stakeholder network
Cost management
Cohesive IoT Deployment Strategy for the C-suite
With the future of IoTon its way to becoming the most disruptive innovation and compelling technology that will facilitate better services to customers, from a support perspective, being connected remotely with customers' devices offers considerable advantages to service organizations. However, this is also not a new concept; earlier, large organizations and data storage companies were remotely connected to their client systems using dedicated telecommunications links before the commercialization of the internet.
Using the estimates of the exponential rise in connected devices, the IoT offers a wide array of opportunities to effectively improve the industry, such as:
Consumer activity tracking includes in-store applications that assess traffic flow and purchase choices.
Manufacturing, storage, distribution, and retail operations have been optimized to increase productivity and reduce waste.
Energy, inventory, and fleet assets are all used more efficiently.
Improved situational awareness, such as vehicle warning systems
Enhanced decision-making, such as medical equipment that notifies doctorswhen a patient's health changes.
Self-parking and self-driving automobiles are examples of autonomous systems.
An interesting case study with Michelin showed that they were adding sensors to tires to better understand wear over time. This data is important for clients to know when to rotate or replace tires which saves them money and enhances safety. However, this also implies Michelin can move away from selling tires and instead lease them. Because sensor data will teach the corporation how to maintain the tires, Michelin now has a new economic incentive to have tires last as long as feasible. IoT device management plays a crucial role in effectively accumulating and processing data from all the widely distributed IoT sensors.
Conclusion
As more sectors discover the advantages linked machines can bring to their operations, IoT enterprises have a bright future ahead of them. Newer services are steadily being pushed out on top of IoT infrastructure in industries ranging from healthcare to retail, telecommunications, and even finance. Due to increasing capacity and AI, service providers will move deeper into IT and web-scale industries, enabling whole new income streams as IoT device management platforms adapt to address these obstacles.
FAQ
Why Is Device Management Crucial for the IoT?
An IoT device management platform's features may help you save time and money and increase security while also providing the critical monitoring and management tools you need to keep your devices up-to-dateand optimized for your unique application requirements.
What Impact Will the IoT Have on the Management or Administration Sectors?
IoT technology allows for increased collaboration, but it will also free up your team's time from monotonous and isolating duties. For example, routine chores may be encoded into computers, freeing up time to concentrate on higher-order tasks.
What Are the Basic Requirements for IoT Device Management?
The four essential needs for IoT Device Management are as follows.
Authentication and provisioning
Configuration and Control.
Diagnostics and monitoring
Updating and maintaining software.
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Industrial IoT, IoT Security
Article | July 11, 2023
Manufacturers were already digitizing their processes before March 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic gave IT and operational professionals in the manufacturing space reasons to want to move faster. Teams that can’t work on the factory floor (pandemic, weather, closed roads, etc.) need a way to monitor and control processes over the network. Supply chain woes—like wildly fluctuating demand and the container ship that blocked the Suez Canal—highlighted the need for agility. A skilled labor shortage has further accelerated plans for automation.
Digitization brings visibility and agility
The fourth industrial revolution, also known as Industry 4.0, lays the foundation of modern digital manufacturing. It brings together cyber and physical systems, automation, industrial IoT, and better vertical and horizontal integration.
The network has a starring role in digital manufacturing, connecting people and applications in any location to factory-floor assets like sensors, actuators, cameras, and industrial automation and control systems (IACS). Benefits of digitization include improved overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) uptime, product quality, worker safety, cybersecurity, 24/7 asset monitoring and faster new product introduction and accelerating plant buildouts.
Four essentials for manufacturing networks
As IT and operational professionals work to innovate traditional manufacturing facilities and operations, we must consider that digital manufacturing requires more networks. Here are guidelines for making sure your manufacturing network is up to the task.
Use network devices specifically designed for industrial environments like factories
In addition to high performance and reliability, industrial routers, switches, and firewalls need to withstand harsh environmental conditions like extreme temperatures, shock, vibration, and humidity. They also need to be able to control access, have support for real-time industrial protocols, and enable the flow of key operational data to move across applications in the cloud. Further, the operational networks they build need to be scalable and highly resilient. We designed our industrial routers and switches to meet these requirements.
Give IT and OT visibility and control into what they care about
The manufacturing network is a joint project of the IT and OT teams. If you’re on the IT team, you want a solution that works with your existing network management and security applications, and doesn’t require significant training or disruption. You want to automate network maintenance and quickly identify and solve performance issues, especially in this business-critical space. If you’re on the OT team, you’re probably not an IT expert. You want visibility of issues that impact availability, product quality, workforce effectiveness and straightforward recommendations to resolve them. Cisco DNA Center – proven in the largest IT networks – meets all these needs. It automates time-consuming manual tasks, continuously monitors network health, and provides reports and controls on an easy-to-use dashboard. Cisco Cyber Vision gives you visibility into assets and processes.
For agile manufacturing, look for “plug-and-play” deployment
Manufacturers are simultaneously expanding production, hyper-customizing products, improving operations, and launching new products and services. To achieve these goals, you need the agility to scale product capacity, change product mix, and reallocate resources as needed. Quickly shift networking and production resources where you need them using Cisco DNA Center’s plug-and-play onboarding and provisioning.
Pay careful attention to cybersecurity
Cybersecurity starts with knowing everything that is connected to your industrial network, who’s talking to each other and what they are saying. Cisco Cyber Vision automatically takes a complete inventory. OT teams use a graphical interface to create production zones (aka network segments) containing all assets that need to communicate. (The painting controller doesn’t need to talk to the assembly-line controller.) Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) deploys polices that block unintended communications between segments to keep malware infections from spreading. Cisco Cyber Vision also takes a baseline of each asset’s usual communications patterns, alerting OT and IT teams to unusual behavior that could be a sign of a security breach.
Prepare to do more with less
The manufacturing skills shortage has widened the skills gap, with fewer experts left on the plant floor to prevent mistakes and solve crises. Connecting your plant floor helps you do more with less. A resilient network with the four qualities I’ve described—rugged devices, IT and OT collaboration, simpler and agile network management, and cybersecurity—helps you proactively identify potential problems, discover the cause, and resolve them before they affect production or quality.
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Enterprise Iot
Article | May 11, 2023
As consumer demands evolve, fleet managers are turning to IoT to deliver products faster and more efficiently. The progress being made in edge computing represents the full potential of IoT: the power of data on the move. However, operating on the edge also reveals some of IoT’s greatest challenges: maintaining network security as the number of endpoints multiplies; rethinking traditional business models as industries become increasingly interdependent; and, perhaps most importantly, establishing a seamless, reliable network across borders, cultures, and regulatory environments.
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Enterprise Iot
Article | July 19, 2022
The concept of "never trust, always verify" is the foundation of the relatively new security architecture known as "zero trust." Zero trust requires that all users and devices be verified every time they connect, even from inside the "moat," in contrast to the conventional castle-and-moat security architecture, which automatically trusts users and devices located within a network's perimeter.
Companies are being forced to reconsider how they safeguard their networks by the internet of things (IoT). Unmanaged smart gadgets connected to the internet expand the number of potential access points for hackers to compromise your security when they are added to a network.
Zero Trust Security Expansion for IoT
After establishing it for users and their devices, organizations must extend zero-trust security to cover unmanaged, non-user devices too. To do this, they require zero trust identity management technologies that automatically register devices, issue credentials, and offer password-less authentication.
Device Visibility
A device may be infected with malware or have a security breach if performance problems or bugs start to appear frequently. In addition, a malfunctioning device may be more vulnerable to attack. Therefore, organizations require device health monitoring that can automatically identify problems and flag them for remedy in order to establish and maintain zero trust security for IoT. Some cutting-edge solutions can also automatically prevent an impacted device from making further connection attempts or carrying out corrective actions without requiring human participation.
The Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP)
The principle of least privilege (PoLP), which argues that any user or device should only obtain the bare minimum access privileges necessary to perform their job functions, is widely used in conjunction with zero trust security. Therefore, organizations must establish the minimal level of network access required for each device to carry out its functions before limiting its potential privileges in order to deploy PoLP for IoT. Implementing identity and access management (IAM) tools and guidelines that support zero trust and PoLP for devices is one approach to accomplishing this.
Security Monitoring
There are other zero-trust security monitoring programs created especially for IoT, such as Palo Alto Networks' IoT Security, which was previously discussed. Businesses can also utilize tools to monitor devices and network traffic, such as next-generation firewalls and intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS). The zero trust security solution for IoT must include monitoring in addition to as much automation as possible so that threats can be identified, contained, and remedied even when no one is there to press a button or disconnect a device manually.
One of the leading causes of zero trust security projects failing over time is that people stop adhering to them once they get complicated. This is especially true for IoT security that operates on zero trust. In addition, it can be logistically challenging to keep remote, unmanaged devices at zero trust.
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