Intel, FIDO Announce Open Protocol for IoT Onboarding

Intel and the FIDO Alliance announced an open protocol for “simply and securely” onboarding IoT devices Tuesday. This could “save the industry from a lot of frustration and unnecessary security risks,” blogged Richard Kerslake, general manager-industrial controls and robotics of Intel's IoT group and co-chair of the FIDO Alliance’s IoT technical working group. Security concerns are a major barrier to IoT adoption, Kerslake noted, calling the standard "an important first step in addressing the security gaps that currently exist in IoT deployment within enterprise and industrial environments." Companies have worked to automate the IoT onboarding process, but there isn't an industry standard, he said. Of current solutions, the end customer has to be known at the time of device manufacture so the product can be preconfigured, creating “unnecessary friction and cost in the supply chain,” he said. The open IoT protocol will enable industrial IoT devices to leverage public key cryptography to simply and securely onboard IoT devices to any cloud or on-premises management platform without the need for human intervention.