Securing IoT in a 5G world: new approaches for innovation

5G promises to be a unified fabric that will connect virtually everything across our homes and businesses – but it presents both opportunities and challenges.

Cellular IoT’s ubiquitous connectivity is a key draw for engineering innovations across fast-growing markets such as infrastructure for more intelligent transport, smart consumer services, smart city devices and connected health. The adoption of 5G is going to significantly accelerate the deployment of these connected devices. But as with most disruptive new technology waves, 5G brings its own challenges that require designers to consider how they support new radio bands while balancing not making IoT device design too complex. Increasingly, the devices in question are low-power, long-lived in the field and low cost; afford low levels of physical access; and are deployed across further and remote locations.

Cellular IoT has long been the choice of secure, large-scale and resilient deployments due to the robust subscriber identity module (SIM) that authenticates a device. As our devices shrink, and as remote devices must endure a wider range of environmental conditions, securing the device’s identity requires new and broader solutions.

Every connected device will need to be updated at some point throughout its lifespan. One of the advantages of IoT devices is that they can receive software and firmware updates over the air. That said, the ability to only allow authorised updates is critical to ensuring the integrity of the device and the code running on it.

Scale is both the IoT’s most significant opportunity and hurdle. Manufacturers need to consider how they will manage and secure the device throughout an extended lifecycle – in the case of cars and even consumer devices, this includes an ‘after-sales’ business model to support the ability to repair, replace or decommission securely to be more sustainable.

Introducing the eSIM 

Embedded SIM (eSIM) technology is still a hardware-based SIM, but this elegant, robust and scalable technology is soldered permanently into the device and was designed to address some of the challenges impeding true scalability in cellular IoT. eSIM allows devices to be deployed anywhere with existing cellular coverage; operator profiles or network providers can be updated over the air, based on standards that offer a frictionless experience for device manufacturers and service operators.

kigen.com