INTELLIGENT CABLING
Protecting the digital
infrastructure
IoT is expanding the attack surface of digital infrastructure,
while deception technologies and artificial intelligence
are solutions for its protection, explains Mechelle Buys Du
Plessis, Managing Director UAE, Dimension Data.
T
he convergence between
operational and digital
technologies is well underway,
being driven by the use cases around
Internet of Things. Digitally enabling both
new and old machines, devices, sensors,
and other objects with connectivity,
provides benefits not realised before.
Real-life and real-time data is much
more accessible on the edge of the network
30
and can be rapidly processed to give
business insights and business benefit.
This results in increased productivity,
reduced operational costs, higher levels of
safety, and overall better decision making,
amongst others.
While the gains are widespread and
adoption is increasing in an exponential
fashion, there is a downside to this rapidly
snowballing trend. The fact is many sensor
manufacturers are just not doing enough
to secure their products by not including
encryption in the product development
stage. Since sensors are light weight
objects with a low footprint, adding on
additional security at a later stage may not
be feasible.
This inherent deficiency of large-scale
object-based networks in the future, is
going to drive the creation of deception
technologies, to confuse intrusive malware
through the presence of real and fake
user identities. Transformative scale-out
converged networks, including supervisory
control and data acquisition control system
architectures or SCADA, operational
technologies, and wider IoT infrastructure,
Issue 16
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS