ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY
provider itself. Is it trustworthy? How can
you verify whether it’s trustworthy? I am
absolutely certain that, as we have rogue
applications in Appstores, we will see
rogue IoT service providers as well.”
Shadi Salama concluded: “Security
is critical, not only in a typical IT
environment but also in the IoT
infrastructure environment. Channel
partners need to ensure they offer
customers end-to-end cybersecurity
solutions. They need to help customers
mitigate cybersecurity risks, as well as
Shadi Salama, Channel Leader – Middle East Theatre, Cisco.
and are thereby missing out on insights
that could improve business decisions.
Aruba’s Ammar Enaya said, “While IoT
grows in deployment, scale and complexity,
proper security methodologies to protect the
network and devices and, more importantly,
the data and insights they extract, must
also keep pace. If businesses do not take
immediate steps to gain visibility and
profile the IoT activities within their offices,
they run the risk of exposure to potentially
malicious activities.”
Nicolai Solling added: “IoT relies on
sensors that then produce data. This data
is then used by the services, which then
deliver value to the client. Unfortunately,
there are a number of problems with this.
First of all, is the data produced fit for a
third party to have? Where is it stored?
Is the service itself secure? What is the
IoT provider doing to keep data safe?
IoT sensors are low-cost devices, but
when you buy your $7.00 smart power
plug, how much security do you think
went into its design? Another problem
is the software. IoT devices use software
like any other system on the Internet,
some of them with generic operating
20
IoT relies on
sensors that
then produce
data. This data
is then used by
the services,
which then
deliver value to
the client.
Nicolai Solling, CTO at
Help AG
systems like embedded Linux. How
then do you patch 50 billion devices in
case of a general vulnerability, like that
seen with Heartbleed in OpenSSL? And
finally, there is the question of the service
Luis Ortega, Managing Director for Middle
East, Africa, South Asia at IFS.
prepare for future industry development,
by helping them to put a strong security
policy in place and deploy threat-centric
security solutions that will help them gain
visibility of the assets, protocols, users,
applications and traffic patterns on the
control network to develop a picture of
what is ‘normal’ for that environment.”
Issue 06
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS