Fairhair Alliance White Paper on IoT Security

Fairhair, an alliance of lighting, building-automation, semiconductor and IT industries, aims to provide a security architecture that is open and compliant with existing and new specifications of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the main Internet standardisation body. The architecture should also support system designers to meet existing and emerging regulations and security standards, such as IEC 62443 or ANSI UL 2900.

Last month 802 Secure, in its infographic titled “IoT Cloud Security Report 2017” explained the state of IoT network security, detailing how ‘shadow IoT/IIoT’ devices are exposing enterprise networks and information to security risks. According to the report, all enterprise environments had rogue consumer IoT wireless devices on their networks transmitting information to other individuals, networks, and the cloud, while a total of 90% of the enterprises had Shadow IoT/IIoT wireless networks.

Fairhair Alliance addresses these risks with the help of its security architecture by specifying device-, network- and application-level protections for systems operating in a more open, IP-based environment. Fairhair’s security architecture is aimed at clarifying how building-automation systems can be secured against any attack. This is possible by limiting the scope of what an attacker can do, enabling attack detection, and providing mechanisms to defend against the attacks