IoT security: A smart solution to maximize ROI

Return on investment is a key performance metric that C-suite executives and entrepreneurs alike use to evaluate the efficiency of investment costs compared with net profits. And it is no different for IoT ventures, where selecting smart solutions can make a big difference in ROI and the overall success of your business.  Take asset tracking, as an example.  Leaders need to get to market efficiently with asset trackers that can send data reliably and securely.  Particularly for small and medium-sized business, it is critical to focus resources on delivering the value of tracking the asset and not on creating and maintaining the underlying security infrastructures.  And even for larger enterprises, in today’s quickly evolving IoT market, an IoT solution that scales along with a growing business can offer huge advantages. 

We know that data is the main asset of IoT businesses. That’s why protecting business and operational data is so essential, both when stored in the device and when sent to cloud. Loss of revenue due to device tampering, sniffing, brute-force attacks, and counterfeiting is a significant pain point. If your devices are used to attack other victims, there could also be an impact to your reputation. Ensuring integrity, authenticity and confidentiality of the data becomes the security imperative to address these risks.

For the C-suite executive, envisioning the staff required to maintain every single asset tracker, 24-7, can seem daunting and be downright expensive.  With legacy IoT technology, the security management of IoT devices gets more and more costly as the number of devices increases. ROI goes right out the window.  Fortunately, there is a smarter way.

u-blox IoT Security-as-a-Service is a disruptive solution that provides a comprehensive end-to-end IoT security platform specifically optimized for LPWA devices, allowing you to offload burdensome infrastructures and instead focus on your business and maximize return on investment. The End-to-end Security package brings out-of-the-box solutions to protect data from silicon to cloud with authenticated encryption and an advanced symmetric key management system that lets you abandon all expensive PKI or PSK setups in favor of a more scalable, light and LPWA optimized way to manage crypto keys.

This – combined with SARA-R5 series LTE-M modules – delivers a powerful pairing that is secure by design: each module has a unique and immutable identity based on a robust root of trust that forms the basis for a trusted set of advanced security functionality. SARA-R5 series modules are ideally suited for asset tracking use cases that transmit critical or confidential information. They support a comprehensive set of 3GPP Rel. 14 features that are relevant for IoT applications, like improvements to power consumption, coverage, data rate, mobility, and positioning. They are 5G-ready, meaning customers will be able to (software) upgrade their deployed devices once 5G LTE has been rolled out by mobile operators, greatly improving IoT device scalability and lifetime.

Consider the investments associated with developing and maintaining the PKI infrastructure to create, renew, protect, and provision IoT device certificates. Now compare that overhead with a simple call to an API that derives a unique and secure PSK for every device every single time. That is the ROI powerhouse behind u-blox IoT Security-as-a-Service. It is a reliable, smart, and secure solution that lets you delegate the complexity of key management to a proven scalable system so you can focus resources on delivering the true value of your IoT venture and maximizing return on investment.
 
Contact us to find out more about how you can protect your business and your data from device to cloud.