The Digital Transformation of the Construction Industry
In the past, the greatest advances in the construction industry relied on big, heavy machinery improving efficiency and productivity. This is changing, now tiny IoT devices are transforming the sector, providing actionable, real-time data enabling timely maintenance, better management of parts, and improved machine utilization, with a reduction in down-time.
However, the data provided by the IoT devices, embedded into the machinery, can only provide value if it can be trusted. Trusted data can only come from secure devices. A security vulnerability in a single device is enough for an adversary to gain access to an entire network. Once in the network, they could modify a device, steal or corrupt sensitive data, or even impact the functioning of machinery. Aware of the increasing risks, 88% of tech decision-makers agree security is a top 3 priority for their business, but the question for many device manufacturers is, where do we start with IoT security?
It’s crucial that the ecosystem comes together to democratize security, delivering assurance and allowing deployments to scale. Underpinning this collaboration is the need for an industry-wide benchmark of IoT security best practice, clear guidance, and a simplified route to security implementation. Alongside this, third-party certification has an important role to play across the ecosystem, helping the industry speak the same language and have a defined notion of what ‘best practice security’ means for the IoT. Tech decision-makers agree with 95% believing that third-party certification can be at least somewhat valuable for ensuring a secure IoT.
IoT Security Certification for the Construction Industry
In the construction industry, a company would not start building a house if it was not on a firm foundation. Flex have the same mindset in the development of their products, working with the ecosystem to ensure security is designed into their devices from the outset and demonstrating security best practices with PSA Certified.
PSA Certified is an industry-leading IoT security framework and certification scheme, developed by a group of world-leading security expert companies to defragment IoT security and secure the future of connected devices. The framework provides standardized resources, focused around the Root of Trust (RoT), that unites the ecosystem under a common language.
The certification is led by third-party evaluation laboratories, which provide independent validation of a product’s conformance to IoT security best practices and their alignment to worldwide standards and regulations. As part of its mission to simplify security PSA Certified was developed with a composite format that allows you to leverage security expertise from the value chain. A device manufacturer can implement pre-certified silicon and pre-certified software into their devices, providing assurances they are building on a secure foundation, whilst also reducing the need for specific expertise, increasing time-to-market, and reducing costs.
Laying the Foundations for a Secure Device
Flex used this composite format when building their iENBL low-power, wide area network, rapid-development platform. The iENBL platform uses PSA Certified silicon, the ST Microelectronics’ ST32L4, to ensure the device is built on a secure foundation built on a hardware RoT. The iENBL platform itself has also been independently tested and verified as meeting IoT security best practice, achieving PSA Certified Level 1.
The iENBL platform can be used as a reference design and development platform, it allows companies to fast-track development and test their solutions without incurring many of the costs associated with custom-built hardware. The PSA Certified achievement builds trust with their customers, verifying that the underlying architecture has been built upon IoT security best practices and can be trusted. Discover how this helped London-based start-up MachineMax in this video: