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Trends in Security Information
The HSD Trendmonitor is designed to provide access to relevant content on various subjects in the safety and security domain, to identify relevant developments and to connect knowledge and organisations. The safety and security domain encompasses a vast number of subjects. Four relevant taxonomies (type of threat or opportunity, victim, source of threat and domain of application) have been constructed in order to visualize all of these subjects. The taxonomies and related category descriptions have been carefully composed according to other taxonomies, European and international standards and our own expertise.
In order to identify safety and security related trends, relevant reports and HSD news articles are continuously scanned, analysed and classified by hand according to the four taxonomies. This results in a wide array of observations, which we call ‘Trend Snippets’. Multiple Trend Snippets combined can provide insights into safety and security trends. The size of the circles shows the relative weight of the topic, the filters can be used to further select the most relevant content for you. If you have an addition, question or remark, drop us a line at info@securitydelta.nl.
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IoT security challenge: responsible industry ecosystem
5.5 RESPONSIBLE INDUSTRY ECOSYSTEM
The market for IoT devices is global. Within this competitive industry, time-to-market, usability and cost are key considerations. The razor-thin margins for IoT devices leave suppliers with less to spend on security. From the perspectives of cybersecurity and national security, security must also become part of the business equation; the cost of implementing security functionality needs to be offset in some manner. Currently, owing to the lack of enforcement of security in IoT devices, there is no level playing field for IoT device vendors nor a common expectation of security functionality
5.5.1 Current Landscape and Recent Developments The competitive advantage in the IoT industry is currently focused on time-to-market rather than secure-to-market. This balance should be shifted so that a specific level of security and privacy is required before market release. Defining security frameworks supported by baseline security measures can be a way forward in this direction. The use of certification and labelling can encourage better understanding and transparency in terms of IoT security and can additionally benefit end users and consumers by educating them and making them more aware of IoT security. Alternatively and perhaps complementarily, liability laws can be strengthened and modernised to hold manufacturers accountable in the event of a breach.
Regardless of the regulatory approach adopted, it is important for cybersecurity regulators as well as the industry to work together and act as a global community that learns from incidents and vulnerabilities proactively. This requires an open culture of sharing incidents and mutual learning.
Liability
Product liability is the area of law in which manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, retailers, and others who make products available to the public are held responsible for damage caused by those products. The Dutch roadmap for safe hardware and software154 has identified liability laws as a key driver for IoT security. Liability litigation historically focused on negligence on the part of the vendor, or a breach of warranty. Under the notion of strict liability, the manufacturer is liable if the product is defective even if the manufacturer was not negligent in making that product defective155. The manufacturer thus becomes a de facto insurer against its defective products, with premiums built into the product's price. Strict liability also seeks to diminish the impact of information asymmetry between manufacturers and consumers: manufacturers have better knowledge of their own products' dangers than do consumers; therefore, manufacturers should bear the burden of finding, correcting, and warning consumers of those dangers. The 1985 European Product Liability Directive156 created a regime of strict liability for defective products: according to this Directive, a product is “defective” when it does not provide the “safety which a person is entitled to expect” (Article 6). While one may assume that this provides a baseline of liability for IoT devices, the use of the term “safety” is telling – security issues that are not outright safety defects may not be addressed at all unless those security issues can be proven to cascade into safety losses or traditional damage such as harm to human health or property. Even more fundamentally, Article 2 of the Directive states that it applies to “movables” – while this may have seemed perfectly reasonable in the 80s for products such as toasters or lawn mowers, for modern connected devices this terminology may entirely exclude the connectivity and server-side components. A recent EU research report157 identifies that vendors may take advantage of this by simply placing critical functionality on the server in order to escape liability. Liability issues for IoT need to be addressed in the context of global and national legislation and case law; in most cases, liability legislation will need to be modernised to account for the unique nature of the IoT ecosystem.
Industry collaborations
The inventory of initiatives in Annex B shows a substantial number of industry collaborations. AIOTI158 is an example of industry collaboration that promotes good practices across the diverse IoT ecosystem. The IoT Consortium159 is an industry body that aims to stimulate the growth of the IoT market by leading the industry’s efforts through strategic partnerships. Specifically, it generates opportunities for companies to meet and collaborate, forms industry committees to identify and address areas of common concern, exercises thought leadership in driving forward the most important conversations on IoT at industry events and in the press, promotes business development opportunities, and leads efforts to raise IoT awareness among consumers, sales channels, and investors. IoT-EPI160 is a European initiative for industry collaborations in IoT platform development. At the core of IoT-EPI are seven research and innovation projects: Inter-IoT, BIG IoT, AGILE, symbIoTe, TagItSmart!, VICINITY and bIoTope. Each project is run by several industry partners in collaboration and aims to solve one of the issues currently faced by the IoT ecosystem. For instance, Big IoT161 addresses the interoperability gap by defining a generic, unified Web API for smart object platforms, with the intention of establishing a marketplace where platform, application, and service providers can easily monetise their assets. Big IoT is spearheaded by Siemens AG (Germany), Bosch Software Innovations (Germany), and Atos (Austria). Within these initiatives the role of governments is limited; indeed, close collaboration between governments appears uncommon. Within the European Union, ENISA162 is a key player in this domain to establish collaborations.
5.5.2 Key Findings
– Owing to the lack of legislation and regulation to enforce security in IoT devices, there is no level playing field for IoT device vendors nor a common expectation of security functionality.
– Liability is likely to be an effective mechanism to drive the industry towards IoT security, but legislation needs to be modernised to address IoT.
– Encouragingly, numerous industry collaborations exist and provide opportunities for knowledge sharing and mutual learning; however, the role of governments in such initiatives appears limited especially outside the EU.