I-Corps: Exploring Commercialization Opportunities for a Software-Defined Approach for Securing Internet of Things

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is two-fold. First, this project may lead to the development of practical security solutions which are needed to fully unleash the benefits of the Internet of Things (IoT). While IoT is projected to be a 1.7 trillion dollar market by 2020, there is a likelihood that progress may be limited due to security concerns. Curtailing IoT progress may ultimately limit the potential societal and commercial benefits. Second, this project, if successful, will have a positive impact on consumers, businesses, and critical infrastructures by protecting digital assets and private data from large-scale cyber-attacks. This I-Corps project has its origins in NSF-funded research on computer networks and cybersecurity. The I-Corps experience will lead to a deeper understanding of the market requirements and benefits of the technologies that were developed as part of NSF-funded research, especially as applied to emerging IoT deployments. This I-Corps project project address three fundamental issues in realizing a product for securing IoT. First, the project will build a library of models that capture the expected (i.e., secure) behaviors of diverse IoT devices in a unified format. Second, the project will enable a novel policy abstraction where the operator defines the intended policies. This abstraction captures relevant physical environments as well as devices' contexts. Third, the project will build a highly scalable and light-weight policy enforcement layer using flexible software-based security appliances realized by new networking paradigms, namely, software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV). Based on these novel technological components, this project has the potential to lead to significant advances in the network security industry.