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How Should IoT Be Architected for OT Environments?

Where are We Today?

There is a certain amount of legacy when dealing with IoT or IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) in operational technology environments. IoT may be a new technology but much like the term "AI" today, IoT came onto the scene fairly quickly, pushed by vendors with new products to sell, improvements to communication, and understandably asset owners took the chance to see what benefits IoT could bring to their operations. It feels like most asset-owners immediate thought was to bring all this new IoT data directly into their existing SCADA systems, but this came with some problems:

I'm not saying bringing IoT data into SCADA is a truely bad thing, it is just far from ideal and limits the futures of both your SCADA and IoT.

Key Concepts for an IoT Future in OT

The introduction of IoT to OT also brings in some advantages, for example as a new technology with new solutions then cybersecurity can be thought about from the start rather than crow-barred in later. In my opinion the following needs to be considered:

  1. IoT environments should be hosted separately to SCADA environments, with only the relevant subset of data from IoT transferred to SCADA as necessary for the operators and controllers
  2. Users need to be appropriately classified for the data they require access to, and where possible this should align with the systems available
  3. IoT should be risk-assessed separately to SCADA to reduce legacy
  4. Appropriate thought should be given to how testing of new technologies and products can be achieved

Concept Architecture

The following diagram shows a general concept of how existing SCADA and new IoT can co-exist within an OT environment

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