Solution Providers Applaud New Security Protocol, Citing Security Concerns For IoT

(Note: This story was originally posted on CRN.com July 20.) A conglomerate of technology vendors said it's developing a protocol to address security challenges in the Internet of Things, a top concern among solution providers and their customers that are looking for opportunities from the growing technology.

Solution providers are applauding the Open Trust Protocol (OTrP) -- a group that includes ARM, Symantec and Sprint. The vendors said this week that they will enable an open standard for trusted software to provide a system root-level of trust with customers who are concerned about IoT security.

Michael Goldstein, president and CEO of LAN Infotech, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Symantec and Microsoft partner, said security is top of mind with customers with whom he has talked to about the Internet of Things.

“I think there is a need for [security] standards,” said Goldstein. “A viable standard in the industry is still far off, but customers today understand that they need more security, particularly on home networks, with the Internet of Things.”

While Gartner estimates that 20 billion devices will be connected in 2020, there isn’t yet any sort of standard applied to security in these devices, opening them up to potential cybersecurity breaches.

The planned protocol, which will be designed to provide secure architecture and code management to protect connected devices, will be compatible with security systems such as ARM’s TrustZone-based Trusted Execution Environments, which is designed to protect mobile computing devices from attacks.

“In an internet-connected world, it is imperative to establish trust between all devices and service providers,” said Marc Canel, vice president of security systems at ARM. “Operators need to trust devices their systems interact with and OTrP achieves this in a simple way. It brings e-commerce trust architectures together with a high-level protocol that can be easily integrated with any existing platform.”

Rob Chamberlin, co-founder and executive vice president of Berkeley, Calif.-based DataXoom, a solution provider that works with Sprint, said security concerns surrounding IoT are prevalent among large enterprises.

“As large companies continue to embrace the Internet of Things, security is going to become a much more important aspect of any large enterprise implementation,” he said.