Huawei hails progress on security standards for IoT

Huawei said significant progress was made towards defining security standards for the Internet of Things (IoT) during a meeting of its external Security Advisory Board (SAB) at its French research centre.

The China-based equipment provider said SAB members from seven leading global universities including the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in France, ETH Zurich in Switzerland and the UK-based University of Birmingham made a "significant contribution" to its IoT security workshop by providing technical guidance on security and privacy.

"Huawei is committed to the development of a secure IoT ecosystem and we are working with internationally-leading experts, including our SAB members, to deliver upon our commitment," Dr. Feng Bao, director of Huawei's Shield Lab security division said.

The Chinese vendor noted that the ubiquitous nature of the IoT and associated devices will lead to the emergence of new security threats and attacks. SAB members discussed potential solutions to those threats with Huawei's internal security experts, with a particular focus on the protection of users, data and devices.

Solutions discussed included identity management and trust establishment.

In a statement, Huawei explained that identity management cover the identification of users and devices to enable the establishment of controls on data access. Trust establishment covers the development and maintenance of relationships between devices, or 'things'.

Bao said Huawei is "working with industrial leaders to standardise security for the IoT." He noted there is much at stake in terms of security, based on predictions that there will be 50 billion connected devices and IoT revenues of $7 trillion (€6.2 trillion) within the next five years.

Workshop members also discussed the challenges associated with researching and standardising security for cloud and telephony security.

All attendees concluded that ongoing research is necessary to identify and solve emerging threats to the IoT market. The members also agreed to collaborate closely moving forward to provide privacy protection covering IoT users and devices.

For more:
- see this Huawei announcement

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