It’s official: IoT is no longer just a buzzword organizations are throwing around. At least that’s what we learned from a recent study from the Ponemon Institute.

IoT as a whole has been a topic of discussion for some time now, but IoT security specifically has been a more challenging conversation. Few have understood the issues around it, but it’s become a part of business and the realities of deployment must be faced. This is consistent with findings from the 2020 PKI & IoT Trends Study, where respondents name IoT as the most important trend driving the deployment of applications using PKI – up from the number 3 spot last year.

 

But just because it’s top of mind for security conscious organizations, doesn’t mean they have it all figured out. When asked what areas are expected to experience the most change and uncertainty, the top response was the need to support new applications, like IoT – which saw an increase of 12% from last year.

 

So, what does this all mean for IoT security? Let’s start with PKI adoption for IoT. This makes sense and means that digital certificates are likely the primary means to secure IoT devices. That’s good news since digital certificates are secure, flexible, easily adoptable and interoperable. They can be used to sign, encrypt, authenticate – or do all three. In fact, the role certificates play in IoT security would help prevent the top IoT threats identified by the survey respondents – from capturing data from the device, to using the device as a network entry point.

So, what about this uncertainty around IoT security? Well, that’s likely because it’s continuously growing, evolving, and for some organizations, a complete departure from the traditional security environment. It’s a shift from the world where IT was in a contained environment, to  today, where your infrastructure is no longer behind four walls – in fact, it’s essentially everywhere – making it much more difficult to maintain your security posture. Infrastructures becoming more distributed, more assets to manage, IoT devices needing to be secured with multiple certificates, and – in case that’s not enough – we’re seeing a trend in short life certificates in the IoT. That level of complexity and throughput puts quite the demand on your PKI, and explains why the study found the most important capability for IoT is scalability to millions of certificates.

With over 25 years of experience and innovation in PKI technology, Entrust has helped several organizations effectively and securely navigate through these changes. Whether you want to understand the security capabilities of your existing PKI, or require a PKI that offers high availability and increased throughput, Entrust can provide you a complete trusted solution.

To read the 2020 PKI and IoT Trends Study, click here.

For more on Entrust’s IoT Security, click here.