NCP - IIoT Security Challenges

In modern application scenarios in the context of Industry 4.0 and IIoT, remote locations typically communicate with a central network, frequently using the TCP/IP family of protocols. In times of rising cybercrimes, apart from the connection reliability also the importance of data security is ever increasing. The complexity of IIoT structures magnifies the area of exposure to attacks and thereby the security risk. This leads to tremendous challenges for IIoT vendors to stay competitive regarding time to market and innovation, as well as for security vendors to guarantee the security of such complex systems. Many companies are lacking the required infrastructure like e.g. a public key infrastructure, and the technical knowledge of the employees that need to configure and operate the systems.

One approach to keep the system complexity manageable, is to unify identical applications that are operated at different places. By using such “cloned” system islands, users save time, avoid mistakes and keep the stock of spare parts small. A problem that appears for this method is that the conflict that arises from identical IP addresses of the system islands prohibits the simultaneous maintenance or control access to several system islands. Modern solutions coming from one single source avoid this by integrating VPNs for securing the connection, as well as Network Address Translation that enables a practically arbitrary number of system islands to be accessible individually at the same time. This can be extended by an asynchronous initialization of connections, e.g. by sending an SMS, minimizing the data traffic of the normally autonomously working system islands and saving cost.