Shift to the Cloud

Making IoT simple and secure

Millions of IoT devices are connected every day. According to Gartner, there will be billion devices connected to the internet generating over some zettabytes of data by next few years. This will put a tremendous amount of pressure on the underlying network infrastructure. Not to mention every one of those devices represents an entry point for potential security threats.

There are several areas to consider when building the right infrastructure foundation for successful IoT implementation:

• Connectivity: The large number of devices will need to be connected constantly no matter where they are, often in harsh hazardous conditions that require ruggedized equipment with PoE or even PoE+ support. They can connect via many different technologies: Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), ZigBee and RFID to name a few.
• Onboarding devices: Has to be simple, so individuals in multiple line of business are able to install and connect devices without requiring IT intervention. It is important that IT defines device profiles so automated device recognition, classification and assignment to virtual containers can happen. See importance of virtual container.
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• Network service level agreement: Need to be clearly defined and enforced to ensure optimal operations. Many devices in the IoT system are delivering mission critical information that require a certain level of QoS. Proper bandwidth reservations on a high performance infrastructure is critical to ensure reliability of the service.
• Management: Needs to be simpleThis can only be achieved with by using a single physical network shared by all IoT systems and users, with a single management system for complete visibility and control.
• SecurityThere are numerous security-related risks inherent in IoT. But with a layered security approach you can mitigate the risks by starting at the device level. Using policy-based rules and network profiles, devices can be properly authenticated and authorized with the right level of access. Then by using data packet inspection, network traffic can be constantly monitored and instant response can be taken to traffic anomalies. Lastly, IoT devices pose risks to assets across the entire network. By establishing containers via virtual network segmentation, IoT devices and the applications that control them are isolated, thereby reducing threats without the cost or complexity of separate networks.

IoT will be part of a continuous digital transformation lifecycle. It may be hard to imagine a simple yet secure digital environment. However, OA has created an elegant solution using virtual network containers to simplify IoT deployment and management and more importantly, to identify, isolate and remediate potential security breaches.

Learn more about the elements of a simple, secure, virtualized network that manages your IoT system effectively:

- Intelligent Fabric
- Unified Access
- Smart Analytics
- Layered network security
- View all IoT blogs

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