INTRASOFT in the IoT Day Roundtable Discussion on IoT Security Innovative Technologies & Research Trends

Celebrating the Global IoT Day, four H2020 projects – IoTAC, SerIoT, SecureIoT, and EU-IoT – organized a virtual roundtable discussion on April 9, 2021 to introduce their activities, and talk about the role of research in enhancing cybersecurity for IoT ecosystems and the potential contribution to industrial and societal development.

INTRASOFT RID department participates in three of the four projects. INTRASOFT has been the coordinator of the SecureIoT project, having contributed with data analytics for security monitoring, with the implementation of the risk assessment tool and with dissemination, communication and exploitation activities. In the EU-IoT project, INTRASOFT is a partner leading the Open-source Ecosystem Building as well as the IoT training and competence development activities, while it is also responsible for the Data Management Plan (DMP) of the project. In the IoTAC project, INTRASOFT RID department leads the integration, testing and verification strategy for the IoTAC components and IoTAC platform, in collaboration with its Information Security Dept., adopting a DevSecOps approach and is responsible for the development of the security monitoring component for IoT ecosystems, residing at the IoTAC Security gateway.

In the event, INTRASOFT RID department was represented by Dr Sofia Tsekeridou, Head of Security Lab, as a moderator and by Dr John Soldatos representing the SecureIoT and the EU-IoT projects.

The panellists highlighted the importance of cooperation of research projects and of leveraging each other’s results, so that when a project ends, its results should be carried over and continued by other research initiatives.

Another important form of inter-project collaboration is the sharing of research datasets as those are hard to find and expensive to generate. Open access publications and open datasets provide even broader opportunities for collaboration and allow research projects to directly contribute to industrial development.

The panellists also agreed that research results need to be validated in commercial environments and know-how transfers need to be realized. Cooperation between research and industry is also important because it provides new testing opportunities and thus, important feedback to the projects.

The importance of anticipating future challenges, especially in respect of cybersecurity, was also discussed. New technologies, the more widespread use of IoT, will generate new threats which we are going to fight with better tools. Security will become the major requirement when designing IoT devices. Special attention, however, should be paid towards training and awareness of the citizens. The education of the users about security threats and vulnerabilities, and how they can protect themselves, is crucial. Basically, a new and strong cybersecurity culture needs to be established.