Security, Privacy, and Dependability Evaluation in Verification and Validation Life Cycles for Military IoT Systems

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a disruptive technology that complements the usage of modern day information and communications technology (ICT) systems. IoT systems, with their small form and cost factor coupled with their increasing reliability, have made huge inroads in all markets. Connected to some form of interconnected networks, either to the mainstream Internet or private networks, they enable ubiquitous and to a large extent autonomous operation. This has taken away the idea that sensing, actuation, and computing needs to be dependent on expensive and complicated legacy systems. Although complete discontinuation of legacy systems is still quite a long journey and would not be completely possible, IoT systems show the waypoints as to how the ICT industry will evolve. The military domain is not far away from adopting IoT technologies in its operational construct. The NATO IST-147 and 176 research task groups have closely examined applicability of IoT for federated and ubiquitous military applications. Introducing IoT devices in the military domain requires verification and validation (V&V) of ICT systems as per operational guidelines. This article proposes and applies a concept for security, privacy, and eependability evaluation of IoT systems that could be used for V&V processes. This would enable more streamlined and standardized evaluations of IoT systems before they can be deemed usable for military contexts.