The state of IoT security
IoT devices are everywhere. Some of them even control electrical grid switches and public water systems, monitor road traffic in real time, track patient health in hospitals, and monitor and control servers for all our favorite media sites and much more. The prevalence of these devices make them a prime target for digital attacks. This risk is augmented by many devices’ insufficient build-in security. The Mirai and not Petya malware incidents are prime examples of how damages resulting from IoT attacks might not be just financial. These attacks can target electrical grids and other critical infrastructure putting millions of lives at risk.
With the increasing connectivity of devices, businesses face emerging forms of online threats. Leading figures in the technology sector acknowledge the significance of security as the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to grow. Ensuring security and authentication must take precedence for corporations, given that IoT presents ample opportunities for malicious surveillance and attacks. The question arises: How can companies establish trust among a vast network of interconnected devices?
PKI: Are You Doing It Wrong?
PKI certificates and IoT security
he growth of IoT and the advancements in data privacy regulations like GDPR underscore the clear link between ensuring device security and protecting a company's reputation. This is precisely where PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) certificates provide significant additional value.
As per William Stallings' "Cryptography and Network Security," the public key comprises both a public and a private component, serving as a means to encrypt and decrypt information accessible only to a specific individual or entity. It also functions as a digital certificate. The term "Public Key Infrastructure" (PKI) encompasses the entire ecosystem dedicated to digital certificates and encryption, encompassing not only software and hardware but also all individuals involved in managing digital certificates.
PKI certificates are issued by a Certificate Authority (CA), responsible for their creation and maintenance. Each PKI certificate serves as a unique, cross-platform, and cross-organizational identifier, playing a pivotal role in establishing trust between customers and businesses. The administration of PKI can be carried out internally or entrusted to a management company.
In terms of security, the Internet of Things (IoT) presents two critical imperatives: establishing trust and maintaining control. Achieving these objectives on the expansive IoT scale can be daunting. Nonetheless, PKI technologies have demonstrated a degree of success in securing extensive systems such as the global payments network. Nevertheless, the security of IoT introduces fresh challenges that compel us to reconsider conventional notions of key management and anticipate emerging security threats.
For the Internet of Things (IoT) to thrive, it’s important to establish high-integrity messaging, ensure secure communications, and achieve mutual authentication on an internet scale. Given their long-standing track record in securing network-connected devices, digital certificates using PKI are ideally positioned to assume the role of online identity for IoT.
Automated PKI management
In-house PKI seems like the best solution in cybercrime prevention since PKI certificates can be issued and managed in a very efficient and effective manner. This is true for companies with a small footprint, but it can become problematic for those who either experience rapid growth or have many locations, resources, and employees. Assurance, scale and technology are some factors that need to be taken into account.
Once you have set up a PKI environment, you will have to manage day-to-day operations like issuing certificates for users, helping users unblock their device PIN, etc., duties which are time-consuming even for small installations. The larger your deployment size, the greater your need for automating some of these tasks. Manual PKI management is size-sensitive: the larger or heterogeneous an infrastructure is, the more complex and error-prone manual PKI management becomes. If you have a large population with different groups of users who need certificates based on different templates and certificate types, management could quickly get out of control without having a tool that allows you to automate most of the lifecycle management. In a vastly expanding IoT landscape, the task of manually on-boarding and provisioning each individual device quickly becomes unmanageable.
Automated provisioning of those PKI certificates, securely, without human intervention is the best solution to the challenges discussed above. Certificates are like blood cells in a real biological organism - they are being created, and they live and die. Their life should follow specific rules, be consistent and shouldn’t take up too much resources. Otherwise the whole organism gets sick or dies.
Automated PKI management, like the one offered by the Venafi Control Plane for Machine Identities, orchestrates the entire certificate lifecycle - from provisioning and rotation to replacement – and comes with many advantages, such as faster and economic operation, better response to changing requirements in a flexible manner, greater observability and auditability, and the possibility of being managed centrally across locations and domains. What is more, you can automatically validate that PKI certificates are properly installed and configured. In the event of a compromise, automation dramatically accelerates remediation, allowing you to replace certificates in seconds.
Conclusion
Digital certificates are a common basis for establishing trust between communicating entities, both on the Internet and within private networks, and they are increasingly important for securing IoT. As IoT expands, no company can discount the tremendous security risks associated with having a multitude of possible infrastructure weaknesses. Digital PKI certificates with automated management will not resolve all security problems, but they are an important part of the equation that you need to assess and tailor to your organizational needs.
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