Q. How do you view the IoT-centric research that is currently taking place in India?
A. It is definitely moving along on the right path. I think that the research scientists and the product companies have definitely understood the underlying cyber-security factors. This would definitely help the country at a juncture where smart cities are starting to get developed.
Q. Since you are optimistic about the research happening in India, how should engineers build industrial systems such that security is incorporated from the chip level itself?
A. Understanding the origin of the chip and components is the key to building the right security for systems, aspects such as potential compromises to the chip at the factory level need to be properly analysed and identified. Once chips are released, the monitoring and the run-time systems should be able to detect compromises before a system is developed on top of a chip.
Q. Finally, for sectors that have societal impact like healthcare, how should industrial systems be designed to incorporate maximum security?
A.For healthcare, the approach is a tad different considering the fact that devices here have personally identifiable information. Data security is the key. Data collection, processing and storage are the key three elements. Access permissions within IoT networks should also be carefully developed and distributed to official sources. On top of the above, engineers should understand the usable life of the data. If data is found to be unnecessary, or provides little value, this must be securely deleted.
