Secure Industrial Internet of Things Critical Infrastructure Node Design

Integration of industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) into critical infrastructures (CIs) is aiming to improve efficiency in many crucial areas. The positive benefits of IIoT are increasing the demand for devices, but without proper security design foundations, CIs may be open to many different attack vectors. This lack of IIoT device security standards is a major concern. Due to the nature of these infrastructures and impact of compromises, CI device security is an utmost concern and must be focused on during all phases of development and manufacturing as opposed to the addition of security after functional design as seen with many current Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Many of these sensors and devices have limited resources, such as low power consumption, reduced memory storage, and reduced fixed-point processing capabilities. Traditional security protocols and solutions are often not practical on these restrained devices, and there are no current standards for characterizing device security. This paper presents a candidate security level-based architecture for low power IoT-CI devices implementing modular, low power, security primitives that are shown through simulation models and embedded software implementation to create a robustly layered defense-in-depth IoT architecture. This candidate architecture will help provide a foundation for future CI-IoT device security standardization.