Overview

Internet of Things (IoT) has been gaining prominence in the consumer space in the last few years by redefining business-to-consumer (B2C) markets such as smart homes, media, infotainment, retail, financial services and so on. This IoT revolution has the potential to dramatically alter manufacturing, energy, agriculture, transportation and other industrial sectors of the global economy in the next decade. Termed as the Industrial IoT (IIoT) or commonly referred to as Industry 4.0, it is expected to bring unprecedented opportunities - along with new risks - to both businesses and society at large, combining the global reach of the Internet with a new ability to directly control the physical world, including the underlying machines, factories and infrastructure that define the modern industrial landscape. However, many questions still remain unanswered such as IIoT's impact on existing industries, finding the right business models, steps required to be taken by all the stakeholders to ensure long-term success. In addition, information security and privacy issues remain one of the prominent challenges for IIoT since industrial applications have strict safety and security requirements.

Industrial IoT (IIoT)

What is IIoT

The Industrial Internet encompasses many industries, including manufacturing, oil and
gas, agriculture, mining, transportation and healthcare, which collectively account for nearly two-thirds of the world economy.

An IIoT approach promises to maximize the connectivity of real-time operating data, automate predictive analytics, and enable increased collaboration in the indstrial space.

IIoT can greatly improve connectivity, efficiency, scalability, time savings, and cost savings for industrial organizations. Companies benefit from IIoT through cost savings due to predictive maintenance, improved safety, and other operational efficiencies. IIoT networks of intelligent devices allow industrial organizations to break open data silos and connect all of their people, data, and processes from the factory floor to the executive offices. Business leaders can use IIoT data to get a full and accurate view of how their enterprise is doing that will help them make better decisions.

Key Technology Enablers

• Advances in communication and networking protocols & standards

• Identification and tracking technologies

• Service enablement & management via service-oriented & context aware n/w architecture

Prominent IIoT Application Areas

• Smart manufacturing

• Environmental monitoring

• Mining and exploration

• Healthcare services

• Asset tracking and logistics

• Smart grid and energy management

• Inventory and production management

• Food and supplychain management

• Integrated transportation systems

• Security and surveillance

Technical Challenges

• Scalability and related data processing, management, and service provisioning aspects

• Heterogenity of the overall network and related delay, conflict, and communication issues

• Managing connected things and facilitating collaboration between different entities and administering device addressing, identification, and optimization at architectural and protocol levels

• Lack of universal service description standard that can provide efficient service discovery and object naming services

• Integrating IoT with existing IT and OT systems or legacy systems into a unified information infrastructure

• Efficient big data analytics tools to derive valuable information from mining and analyzing massive amounts of data generated from both IIoT applications and legacy IT systems

• Integrating IoT devices with external resources such as existing software systems and Web services requires development of various middleware solutions, since applications vary greatly from industry to industry

• Building practical applications in which heterogeneous IIoT-related data are combined with traditional data

Security Aspects of IIoT

Information security and data privacy protection are two of the core challenges faced by IoT owing to its deployment, mobility, and complexity issues. Many existing technologies available for consumer use are certainly not suitable for industrial applications since many of them have stringent safety and security requirements. As IoT allows several things to be tracked, monitored, and connected on a daily basis, and a lot of personal and private and sometimes sensitive information can be collected in an automated fashion, protecting privacy in the industrial scenarios becomes much more critical than the traditional ICT environments because the number of attack vectors on IoT entities is apparently much larger.

For example, a smart connected health monitor will collect patient’s information, such as heart rate and blood sugar level and then send the information directly to the remote doctor/clinic over the network. When this information is transferred over the Internet, it could be easily stolen or compromised unless it is secured end-to-end.

However, many issues such as the definition of privacy and legal interpretations are still vague and are not clearly defined in IoT and they vary significantly from country to country. Although the existing network security technologies provide a basis for privacy and security in IoT, more work still needs to be done if they have to make an impact in IIoT, and the following aspects need to be considered:

• definition of security and privacy from multiple viewpoints such as regional, social, legal, cultural and so on

• trust and reputation mechanisms

• advanced communication security techniques to include end-to-end encryption

• privacy of communication and user data

• security of services and applications

Future Directions and Trends

IIoT is widely considered to be one of the primary trends affecting several businesses today. Industries are pushing to modernize systems and equipment to meet new regulations, to keep up with increasing market speed and volatility, and to deal with disruptive technologies. Embracing IIoT is expected to bring significant improvements to safety, efficiency, and profitability, and this trend will continue as IIoT technologies are more widely accepted and adopted in the near future.

Major Research Trends

• Employing Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence Techniques

• Using Cloud and Cognitive Computing

• Context-aware IoT Computing

• Developing Energy-efficient/Green IoT Solutions

• Cyber-Physical-Social IoT Systems

Standardization Activities

Lack of universal standards is a concern in IoT, and the underlying protocols and standards are too disparate in nature. And when it concerns IIoT, the issue is more critical since emerging IoT standards need to get flwlessly integrated with legacy industrial standards and systems.

Specific aspects within IoT standardization that need due consideration include the following:

• interoperability issues

• radio access and spectrum issues

• semantic interoperability

• security and privacy issues

• service layer interoperability

OMG Group has been leading some of the activities in IIoT standards and relevant information can be accessed via http://www.omg.org/hot-topics/iot-standards.htm.

IIoT Platforms

• Predix by GE

• Ignition IIoT Platform by Inductive Automation

• OpenGate Platform by Amplia

References

1. Industrial Internet Consortium, http://www.iiconsortium.org/
2. "Internet of Things in Industries: A Survey", IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, vol. 10, no. 4, November 2014
3. Ignition IIoT Platform, https://inductiveautomation.com/iiot-platform
4. OpenGate Platform, http://www.amplia-iiot.com/
5. GE IIoT, http://www.geautomation.com/
6. GE Predix IIoT Platform, https://www.ge.com/digital/predix
7. Honeywell IIoT, https://www.honeywellprocess.com/en-US/online_campaigns/IIOT/Pages/Index.html
8. Object Management Group, http://www.omg.org