Challenges and Opportunities in Securing the Industrial Internet of Things

Given the tremendous success of the Internet of Things in interconnecting consumer devices, we observe a natural trend to likewise interconnect devices in industrial settings, referred to as industrial Internet of Things or Industry 4.0. While this coupling of industrial components provides many benefits, it also introduces serious security challenges. Although sharing many similarities with the consumer Internet of Things, securing the industrial Internet of Things introduces its own challenges but also opportunities, mainly resulting from a longer lifetime of components and a larger scale of networks. In this article, we identify the unique security goals and challenges of the industrial Internet of Things, which, unlike consumer deployments, mainly follow from safety and productivity requirements. To address these security goals and challenges, we provide a comprehensive survey of research efforts to secure the industrial Internet of Things, discuss their applicability, and analyze their security benefits.