A design approach to IoT endpoint security for production machinery monitoring

The Internet of Things (IoT) has significant potential in upgrading legacy production machinery with monitoring capabilities to unlock new capabilities and bring economic benefits. However, the introduction of IoT at the shop floor layer exposes it to additional security risks with potentially significant adverse operational impact. This article addresses such fundamental new risks at their root by introducing a novel endpoint security by design approach. The approach is implemented on a widely applicable production machinery monitoring application by introducing real-time adaptation features for IoT device security through subsystem isolation and a dedicated lightweight authentication protocol. The paper establishes a novel viewpoint for the understanding of IoT endpoint security risks and relevant mitigation strategies and opens a new space of risk-averse designs that enable IoT benefits while shielding operational integrity in industrial environments.