Device Identity Management and End-to-End Security

Abstract

Whether we're talking about Internet of Things (IoT) devices in hospitals, remote sensors in nuclear power plants, or connected traffic lights, interconnecting these devices off ers an opportunity to reduce costs, increase effi ciency and enable completely new capabilities. However, these enhancements come with a cost: the complexity of ensuring these devices are organized, interoperable, and safe from cyber-attacks. [1] The evolution of SIM technology has enabled the development of these IoT devices with a forecasted growth of 15.47 percent. SIM usage in IoT devices is even expected to overtake SIM usage in mobile phones [2], [3].Currently the ecosystem for securing IoT devices is closed and proprietary. Previously, the Internet had a similar issue where because it was hard coded, the only way to scale it to billions of websites was to make it more open. The same is true for IoT devices: we need to have an open, generic framework in order to scale from millions of devices to billions. The attack surfaces 5G presents will increase signifi cantly [4] and standards are a great way to reduce these.The GSMA IoT SAFE open framework enables IoT device manufacturers and IoT service providers to leverage the SIM as a hardware secure element, or 'Root of Trust'. It can then be used to establish end-to-end, chip-to-cloud security for IoT products and services. [5] This paper explores how an IoT registration entity can scale identity management in an open framework.