Network Security Strategies and Standards for the Industrial Internet of Things

Abstract:

Security is one of the stepping stone for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), as it does not only allow privacy, but is also a precondition for functional safety. However, the integration of cost-optimized and ressource-restricted embedded systems into IIoT architectures remains a challenge with many open questions for the research from academic and the development from industry. The open questions start from lightweight and potentially post-quantum cryptography, include end-to-end security protocol design and implementation over arbitrary busses and wireless links, and certainly do not end with to the design and operations of distributed Publik-Key-Infrastructures (PKI) for the full life-cycle of IIoT nodes.
The keynote presentation will give an overview over these questions and present potential solutions, which are under discussion in the IIoT community. A part of these solutions is now already in the phase of standardization in organizations like Open Metering Systems (OMS) group, Profibus International (PI), or CAN in Automation (CiA) with active contributions from the author’s teams.

Professor, Dr Axel Sikora
Axel Sikora holds a master (Dipl.-Ing.) of Electrical Engineering and a master (Dipl. Wirt-Ing.) of Business Administration, both from Aachen Technical University, Germany. He is a DAAD alumnus from 1990/91 in St Petersburg Politechnical Institute. He has done a Ph.D. (Dr.-Ing.) in Electrical Engineering at the Fraunhofer Institute of Microelectronics Circuits and Systems, Duisburg, with a thesis on SOI-technologies. After various positions in the telecommunications and semiconductor industry, he became a professor at the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University Loerrach in 1999. In 2011, he joined Offenburg University of Applied Sciences, where he now leads the Institute of Reliable Embedded Systems and Communication Electronics (ivESK). Since 2016, he is also deputy member of the board to Hahn-Schickard Association of Applied Research, a government-funded research institute in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. There, he now leads two engineering divisions “Embedded Solutions” and “Software Solutions”. Since 2019, he is also affiliated to Technical Faculty of Freiburg University, allowing him to serve as primary Ph.D. supervisor.
Dr. Sikora is founder and head of Steinbeis Transfer Center Embedded Design and Networking and shareholder of STACKFORCE GmbH, an independent and successful spin-off engineering company around IoT connectivity solutions.
His major interest is in the field of efficient, energy-aware, autonomous, and value-added algorithms and protocols for wired and wireless embedded communication with a strong focus on end-to-end security concepts and implementations for the Industrial Internet of Things.
Dr. Sikora is author, co-author, editor and co-editor of several textbooks and more than 200 peer-reviewed papers in the field of embedded design and wireless & wired networking. Amongst many other duties, he serves as Chairman of the annual embedded world Conference (Nuremberg), the world’s largest event on the topic, and as Scientific Advisor of the annual Wireless Congress (Munich) and of the annual IoT Conference (Stuttgart).