In the frame of the ASSURED interview series, Dr Thanassis Giannetsos, Head of UBITECH’s Digital Security & Trusted Computing Research Group, is talking about the future of security in next-generation smart connectivity systems comprising heterogeneous IoT and other types of cyber-physical systems. Dr Giannetsos is the technical coordinator of the ASSURED project (https://www.project-assured.eu/), dealing with Sustainable Operational Assurance and Verification for Systems-of-Systems Security and Privacy, who together with his team, is designing new operational assurance mechanisms for these types of systems by converting them into hardware-based roots of trust.
Dr Giannetsos is talking about the ASSURED project, which, as the name suggests, is about safeguarding the operational assurance of IoT systems. More specifically, he has discussed about the future of security in next-generation smart connectivity systems comprising heterogeneous IoT and other types of cyber-physical systems. Such deployments constitute the cornerstone for evolving sectors, like manufacturing, smart city gateways, aerospace, autonomous vehicles, etc. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to converge their security and safety by assessing dynamic trust relationships and defining the necessary trust models based on which involved entities can establish trust for cooperatively executing safety-critical functions.
This could be summarised as the ASSURED vision. To fully understand the importance of the project, he dived deeper into the ever increasing attack vector that can be exploited by attackers and that has led to recent exploits. And this also includes roots-of-trust, such as trusted execution environments or trusted platform modules (TPMs), as sw- and hw-based security elements, which are essential to establish a verifiable chain of trust throughout the entire application stack of the target system. In other words, ASSURED tries to build up and ensure the correct behaviour and execution of the IoT systems throughout their entire lifecycle by building mechanisms that provide verifiable evidence on the system’s correct operation even against very strong adversaries.
Watch the full interview to learn more!
