TCG and IIC team via liaison relationship for IoT security

Trusted Computing Group has been working for more than a dozen years to provide baseline technologies and industry standards for securing devices, data, and networks. Its greatest hits list includes the Trusted Platform Module, or TPM, which to date has been included in billions of PCs, servers, networking gear, industrial systems, kiosks, ATMs, voting machines, gaming machines, and many other things. In fact, TPM 2.0, the newest specification, was recently adopted as an international standard by ISO/IEC.

TCG also has developed widely adopted standards for self-encrypting drives (SEDs), now at 100 percent market penetration for new flash and enterprise drives. Its network security standards are supported by major OS and hardware vendors for secure connectivity, health checks, and ensuring bad guys are not on the network. The Industrial Internet Consortium, or IIC, is relatively new, but is making a big impact in helping move the Industrial Internet ahead with best practices – including those for security. Major industrial players have flocked to the IIC as a forum for the development of a framework for Industrial IoT, with security being a major concern.

It only makes sense that the two organizations work together to help ensure that this growing – and in some ways, disorderly IoT – can be safely and efficiently secured using standards that are highly vetted, interoperable, and comprehensive. How will the organizations do this? TCG and the Industrial Internet Consortium plan to share work on security in the Industrial IoT, including the definition of requirements and review of select work efforts.

As requirements and application of existing or new standards are defined, the two organizations will work to educate their members and the wider user communities about key security issues and solutions. As a prior example of ongoing collaborative efforts in industry, TCG worked closely with the International Society of Automation (ISAA) on a secure overlay network architecture based on existing TCG network security standards that helped secure legacy networks in industrial control environments. This approach allows for security to be added to existing network architectures even as the industry continues to evolve new architectures and standards.

The liaison between TCG and the IIC and the collaboration of their members demonstrates how companies can work together to solve real problems by sharing best practices and technical approaches that benefit not only them, but their suppliers, customers, and the end users or beneficiaries of their products as well.

Watch for details of the IIC security framework that includes input from TCG.