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Security Framework for Industrial IoT Built on Trust

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Ultimately, it comes down to trust.  When someone hears about the Industrial IoT, and asks, “What about security?” what they probably mean is, “Should I trust it?”  Without trust, things get complicated, bog down, and sometimes stop moving altogether.  Without trust it’s difficult to build anything—a team, a business, or a family.  And among other things, trust depends on security.

Recently the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) published a paper titled Industrial Internet of Things Volume G4: Security Framework, that outlines a comprehensive security framework for the Industrial IoT (IIoT).  In the introduction, the paper outlines five key system characteristics that build trust: security, safety, reliability, resilience and privacy.  The IIC paper then describes how these characteristics must be infused into the IIoT for industrial users to trust it.

It says, “A typical Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) system is a complex assembly of system elements. The trustworthiness of the system depends on trust in all of these elements, how they are integrated and how they interact with each other. Permeation of trust is the hierarchical flow of trust within a system from its overall usage to all its components.”

Trust is fundamental to the Security Framework

The idea is that for trust to permeate through the IIoT system—for the users to trust it—the system must be trustworthy from the ground up.  First, the components or building blocks of the system must be trusted.  Next, the system builders need to both trust these components, as well as put them together in a trustworthy way.  When all is checked, tested, and functioning well at these two levels, and the system meets the specifications of the system users, then the users will begin to trust the system.  Trust will permeate down from the users to the system builders, and ultimately to the components and those who supply them.

Skkynet’s secure-by-design approach to the IIoT follows this model.  At the level of components, our software and services have been installed in hundreds of mission-critical systems.  The system integrators who work with these components trust them, because they have seen how they perform.  Using DataHub® and SkkyHub™, they have been able to deliver highly-trusted, well performing systems.  Plant managers and owners are satisfied with these systems, and have extended their trust to the system integrators, as well as to the software and services.

How the IIC’s Security Framework applies specifically to Skkynet’s SkkyHub, DataHub, and ETK is well beyond the scope of one blog—more needs to be said, and is coming soon.  The Security Framework concepts are familiar to us, as we have been incorporating them for years in the secure-by-design approach we take in developing our software and services.  We are pleased that the IIC has published this paper, and consider it a valuable resource for gaining a better understanding about security and the Industrial IoT.

Skkynet Exhibits Industrial IoT Solutions in Germany and Austria

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Key Industry 4.0 executives at leading manufacturing companies recognize the value of Skkynet’s approach to the IIoT.

Mississauga, Ontario, September 28, 2016 – Skkynet Cloud Systems, Inc. (“Skkynet”) (OTCQB:SKKY), a global leader in real-time cloud information systems, presented their SkkyHub™, DataHub®, and ETK solutions through the Wavefront Wireless Market Entry Program – Germany & Austria 2016.  As part of this program, the Skkynet delegation met with key Industry 4.0 executives from leading manufacturing companies and government agencies in Berlin, Stuttgart, Gunskirchen, and Sattledt, and Skkynet technology was exhibited at the Industry of Things World 2016 in Berlin.

“We were warmly received, and our approach to the Industrial IoT got an enthusiastic response,” said Xavier Mesrobian, Vice President, Sales and Marketing for Skkynet.  “Those who have been exposed to the concept of the IoT for the past year or two and who have attempted to implement it in an industrial context showed a deep appreciation of Skkynet’s approach, and the value of what we offer.”

The week-long trip started with a two-day exhibit at the Industry of Things World conference in Berlin, where more than nine hundred high-level executives involved in Industry 4.0 and the Industrial IoT were invited to access an embedded device in real time through an interactive display on their cellphones, using SkkyHub technology.  In the following days, the Skkynet delegation had the opportunity to visit plant facilities at companies in Berlin and Stuttgart, as well as Gunskirchen and Sattledt in Austria, and discuss opportunities for cooperation.

“Canadian companies like Skkynet have world leading solutions that make the Industry 4.0 opportunity a reality,” stated Brian Roberts, VP of Global Services for Wavefront.

“I would like to express my gratitude to Wavefront for arranging these visits, and our sincere thank-you to our hosts at each event, as well as Global Affairs Canada in Germany and in Austria,” said Mesrobian.  “It was a pleasure to be part of such a successful trip, and to collaborate with Wavefront at the Industry of Things World conference.”

Industry of Things World is an international knowledge exchange platform bringing together more than 900 high-level executives who play an active role in the Industrial Internet of Things scene, providing an opportunity for them to rethink their technology & business strategies for scalable, secure and efficient IoT.

About Wavefront

Wavefront is Canada’s Centre of Excellence for Wireless Commercialization and Research, accelerating the growth and success of wireless companies by connecting them with critical resources, partners and opportunities, to drive economic and social benefits for Canada.

About Skkynet

Skkynet Cloud Systems, Inc. (OTCQB:SKKY) is a global leader in real-time cloud information systems. The Skkynet Connected Systems platform includes the award-winning SkkyHub™ service, DataHub®, WebView™, and Embedded Toolkit (ETK) software. The platform enables real-time data connectivity for industrial, embedded, and financial systems, with no programming required. Skkynet’s platform is uniquely positioned for the “Internet of Things” and “Industry 4.0” because unlike the traditional approach for networked systems, SkkyHub is secure-by-design. For more information, see http://skkynet.com.

Safe Harbor:

This news release contains “forward-looking statements” as that term is defined in the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Statements in this press release that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements, including beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future, and results of new business opportunities. Actual results could differ from those projected in any forward-looking statements due to numerous factors, such as the inherent uncertainties associated with new business opportunities and development stage companies. Skkynet assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements. Although Skkynet believes that any beliefs, plans, expectations and intentions contained in this press release are reasonable, there can be no assurance that they will prove to be accurate. Investors should refer to the risk factors disclosure outlined in Skkynet’s annual report on Form 10-K for the most recent fiscal year, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and other periodic reports filed from time-to-time with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Manufacturers and Machine Builders Weigh In on IIoT

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With all the conversation swirling around about Industry 4.0 and the Industrial IoT, you sometimes have to wonder what’s actually trickling down to those people who are expected to buy in, like manufacturers and machine builders.  The bottom line is that someone is going to have to invest in the IIoT, and they expect to get a return on that investment. IIoT proponents are counting on manufacturing companies and OEMs to put some skin in the game.  But who is talking to them?

At least one person is.  Larry Asher, Director of Operations at Bachelor Controls Inc., a certified member of the Control System Integrators Association (CSIA), has been meeting with long-term customers in a number of industrial fields, and asking them for their thoughts on the IIoT. Their responses indicate an overall positive view of the potential.

Asher first reiterates a growing understanding that the IIoT is not just a new term for industrial networking, or SCADA as usual.  He says, “Though it is true that networking has existed as part of industrial control solutions for many years, traditional isolated control networks will not support the level of integration required for large-scale data and analytics, nor will they support the number of connected devices that will be a part of IIoT-based solutions. IIoT-based solutions demand connectivity, accessibility and security, making the network infrastructure critical.”

He then shares the insights garnered from his conversations, organized into four areas that the IIoT is expected to impact: data analysis, mobile/remote access, supply chain integration, and preventative maintenance.

Summary of Insights

Here is a summary of how the manufacturers and machine builders he met with view the impact of the IIoT:

Data and Analytics: Everyone agrees that investing in IIoT to enhance data collection and develop more sophisticated and powerful analytics is a good thing.  Applying this higher level of analysis is already impacting procedures and control implementation on the plant floor. Some manufacturers are even revising company organizational structures to bring in people who can maximize performance and profit using IIoT data.

Mobile/Remote Access: Access to data via mobile devices and/or from remote locations has seen less interest, but that is expected to change.  Right now the implementation is fairly low, despite the significant number of products and options available, perhaps due to a perception of high cost.  But, as Asher reports, “mobility remains as a central theme and poised for rapid growth with a change in the value proposition.”

Supply Chain Integration: As to supply chain integration, there was a wide range of experience.  Some saw little or no difference between current practices and what the IIoT has to offer, while others reported that the integration is so complete that suppliers now effectively have direct access to user inventory levels.

Preventative Maintenance: Manufacturers and OEMs alike appreciate the value of IIoT-based preventative maintenance.  With machines and equipment connected directly to the vendor, manufacturers can automatically generate maintenance work orders or request spare parts.  Vendors gain a competitive advantage when they are able to monitor and remotely service their equipment 24/7, which also provides them with a source of recurring revenue.

Overall, the views of those at manufacturing plants responsible for ensuring ROI validate the practicality and cost-effectiveness of the Industrial IoT.  As word gets out, and more decision-makers understand the benefits, we expect to see increased levels of adoption.

System Integrators Defend Their IIoT Readiness

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A clear sign of a growing opportunity is when people start staking their claims.  Here’s a case in point.  A recent blog in AutomationWorld has caught the attention of system integrators, and from their comments it seems to have rubbed some of them the wrong way.  The blog, The IIoT Integrators Are Coming, by Senior Editor Stephanie Neil, claims that automation system integrators may lose out on IIoT opportunities if they don’t keep up with the technology, leaving the space open for non-industrial IoT companies from the IT world.

Several control system integrators, members of Control System Integrators Association (CSIA), have responded saying that Neil and the people she quotes are mistaken.  They explain the differences between consumer or business IoT and Industrial IoT, and point out that it is easier for a company that knows industrial automation to add IoT to their portfolio than for an IoT company to learn industrial process control. For example, in counter-blog We Are Ready for IIoT, Jeff Miller of Avid Solutions makes the case that his company, at least, is ready.

If nothing else, this conversation provides a useful window into what these potentially key players in the Industrial IoT space are thinking.  On the one hand, some realize that IIoT can be a valuable service to offer their customers, and are gearing up for it.  Others are holding back, questioning the value, reluctant to test the waters, and wondering whether this isn’t just mainly hype that will evaporate in a year or two.  But, according to Neil, if they wait too long, someone else will swoop in and steal their lunch.  And that person or company may be completely outside the traditional world of industrial system integration.

Who is right?

Our take on this is simple.  Both are right.  First, anyone from the IT realm working in IoT needs to know that there is a real difference between regular IoT and Industrial IoT.  An industrial user of the IoT will have special requirements, different and in many cases far beyond what someone might need for a general business or consumer application. At the same time, system integrators must understand that the knowledge required for building an IoT application is highly specialized. It takes a deep understanding of TCP and working with unstructured data, in addition to the critical issue of Internet security.  Above all, we encourage system integrators to keep an open mind, and treat the IIoT as a new opportunity to better serve their customers.

As to the best approach to take, we see at least two: do it yourself, or partner with someone who provides good tools. We won’t stand in the way of the DIY’ers in the crowd, but for those who value tools, we have an easy and cost-effective way to implement the Industrial IoT that works. It does not require integrators to learn new protocols or build security models. It simply connects to in-plant systems and provides the remote data access that automation engineers expect: secure, bi-directional, and real-time, with no open firewalls, no VPNs, and no programming. And it has a revenue-share model for system integration companies that want to enjoy the financial benefits of the IIoT.

REST Not Necessarily Best for Industrial IoT

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What makes the Industrial IoT different from the regular IoT?  Is there any real difference between connecting a home thermostat or a pressure sensor on a tank to the Internet?  In both cases, the device sends data to a server on the cloud, and the homeowner or plant management use the data as needed.  But there are differences—differences significant enough to benefit from deeply different architectures.

A recent white paper from Skkynet, Industrial IoT without REST, discusses these differences.  REST (Representational State Transfer) using HTTP is often assumed to be an appropriate communication architecture for the Industrial IoT.  But REST was designed for human use of the Internet, not the IoT.  Data transmissions in the REST paradigm consume too much bandwidth, and add too much latency.

REST: individual transactions

This is not surprising, since the REST approach was conceived long before there was an Internet of Things at all.  And its creators certainly did not envision using it for industrial, real-time data communication.  While a home thermostat may update a single temperature reading once or twice per minute, a typical industrial system can publish data from thousands of data points, updating many times per second.  With REST, each message that gets passed between the device and server occurs as a distinct HTTP request, opening a new socket, performing the transaction, and then closing the socket, with all of the necessary set-up time and communication overhead.  All transactions must take the form of “request/response” where the device sends a request to the server and then collects the response.

ETK: open channel

In contrast, Skkynet’s approach to the Industrial IoT found in the ETK (Embedded Toolkit) holds open a permanent connection, a channel that can immediately transmit data in either direction without the back-and-forth overhead of socket set-up or message replies.  The result is a huge savings in bandwidth, and much lower latency.  For example, some REST-based systems limit each user to 250 transactions per minute, while the ETK can comfortably handle 1,000,000 transactions per minute.

There are other advantages to the ETK approach in terms of the scalability of the system, the symmetry of data communications, and the ability to recover robustly when the Internet goes down.  To find out more about the ETK, and why the REST approach to the IoT may not be ideal for the Industrial IoT, we encourage you to read the white paper.

Collecting Big Data in Real Time

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It was bound to happen.  The two titans meet.  The gargantuan grasp of Big Data turns its ever-open hands towards the firehose stream of real-time data.  “The next evolution of the big data phenomenon has turned out to be real time streaming of data,” says Big Data pundit Rick Delgado in a recent blog: What Real Time Streaming Means for Big Data.  “Organizations have an increased need to gather and analyze their data at the same time, making real time data streaming a must if big data is going to keep up with demand.”

Will Big Data ever be satisified?  Not as long as the demand for informed action continues to grow.  Will we ever run out of real-time data?  Not as long as stuff keeps happening.  The only thing necessary to complete this marriage is to make the connection, and stream real-time data into the welcoming, capable hands of Big Data.

This is what we are keen on.  With our established track record in real-time industrial data communications, we anticipated this need for real-time analytics years ago, along with other thought leaders.  In a blog back in 2011 we quoted Paul Maritz, President & CEO of VMware at keynote address on the future of cloud computing at VMWorld 2011, “People are going to have to be able to react to information coming in, in real time.” Since then we’ve been putting the vision into action, and it’s great to now see the Big Data people coming on board.

Real-Time Analytics from Big Data

The advantage of live connectivity to Big Data is you can now do your analytics in real time. Delgado sees this clearly.  Real-time inputs to Big Data, he says, can fuel near-real-time outputs.  Rather than a two-stage process of storing the data, and then analyzing it, the analysis can take place on the fly, and your system can function like the mind of an athelete, jazz musician, pilot, or soldier. Insights become more spontaneous, and reactive responses are replaced by pro-active initiatives. The competitive advantage goes to those who can better anticipate and immedately meet customer demands, increasing customer satisfaction and establishing greater loyalty.

Delgado lists a number of areas where real-time streaming to Big Data could have a significant impact. For example, certain types of fraudulent or suspicious patterns of trading in the financial sector that don’t show up in the aggregate could be spotted in real time.  Businesses could monitor customer behavior on websites and social media to provide people with exactly what they need, at the moment they want it.

Additional Benefits – Industrial Sector

Among various application spaces that Delgado mentioned, he left out a significant one: streaming real-time Big Data for industrial users.  Imagine an operator of a machine where an alarm light is flashing.  Looking at his smart phone or tablet, he gets not only the alarm and raw data from the machine, but a real-time analysis of what could be wrong.  And along with that, he may receive suggested action steps based on comparing that data in real time to technical specs, historical records, and even live recommendations from its manufacturer, who is also connected to the machine, and monitoring it in real time.

Companies like GE are investing millions in such systems.  They collect and analyze in real time the Big Data coming from power turbines, jet engines, and other equipment during operation.  As the Industrial IoT gains acceptance, we see other companies, big and small, follow suit.  The value inherent in real-time data for making instantaneous decisions is too great to pass up.  The industrial sector, a large and long-time user of real-time data, stands to benefit significantly by connecting to Big Data.