It has been on my mind for a long time and I have been avoiding it too. But it is time to face the inevitable and just talk about it. After all, the more open the discussions, the more answers (and questions) will arise, and that is a good thing.
Yes, it is the big elephant in the room called Data Security. And the concern is going to get much worse as the proliferation of edge devices and fog computing, and IoT technobabble goes nuclear.
I have been involved in numerous discussions on IoT (Internet of Things) and Industrial Revolution 4.0. I have been in a consortium for the past 10 months, discussing with several experts of their field to face future with IR4.0. Malaysia just announced its National Policy for Industry 4.0 last week, known as Industry4WRD. Whilst the policy is a policy, there are many thoughts for implementation of IoT devices, edge and fog computing. And the thing that has been bugging me is related to of course, storage, most notably storage and data security.
Storage on the edge devices are likely to be ephemeral, and the data in these storage, transient. We can discuss about persistence in storage at the edge another day, because what I would like to address in the data security in these storage components. That’s the Big Elephant in the room I was relating to.
The more I work with IoT devices and the different frameworks (there are so many of them), I became further enlightened by the need to address data security. The proliferation and exponential multiplication of IoT devices at present and in the coming future have increased the attack vectors many folds. Many of the IoT devices are simplified components lacking the guards of data security and are easily exposed. These components are designed for simplicity and efficiency in mind. Things such as I/O performance, storage management and data security are probably the least important factors, because every single manufacturer and every single vendor are slogging to make their mark and presence in this wild, wild west world.
Picture from https://fcw.com/articles/2018/08/07/comment-iot-physical-risk.aspx
