This afternoon Professor Giampaolo Bella will lecture on Cybersecurity in the Internet of Things (IoT) and Smart Infrastructures for our students of the “Advanced Cybersecurity and Global Cybersecurity Strategy” course within the Advanced Master in Privacy, Cybersecurity, Data Management and Leadership LLM at the European Centre on Privacy and Cybersecurity (ECPC)!
 
During this fourth week of the course, we will analyse the threat landscape related to IoT and Smart Infrastructures, both to understand what needs to be secured and to develop specific security measures to protect the IoT from cyber threats.
 
ENISA defines IoT as a cyber-physical ecosystem of interconnected sensors and actuators, which enable intelligent decision making. Information (very often, also personal data) lies at the heart of IoT, feeding into a continuous cycle of sensing, decision-making, and actions. IoT is tightly bound to cyber-physical systems and in this respect, it is an enabler of Smart Infrastructures, such as Industry 4.0, smart grids, smart transport, etc., enabling services of higher quality and facilitating the provision of advanced functionalities.
 
The threats and risks related to IoT devices, systems, and services are manifold, and evolve rapidly. Effectively, the threat landscape concerning IoT is extremely wide, with a great impact on citizens’ safety, security, and privacy.
 
Thanks to the lecture, it will become apparent how securing the IoT goes in the direction of applying a zero-trust model at the highest possible capillarity level and, in particular, how and why this would be beneficial to the layman’s devices of intensive use, such as network printers, VoIP phones, Wi-Fi cameras, and voice personal assistants (VPAs).
 
Part of the analysis of IoT security will also be the fundamental change of the network infrastructure where IoT devices will be implemented. 5G has brought with it many new tools to manage IoT security challenges, which were missing from the previous generation of telecom systems, and can now be used to create a much more controlled environment for IoT solutions.