IoT systems connect sensors and control networks, so device identity, secure updates, data protection, and reliable operation support safety and availability.
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Background for this topic.
Internet of Things (IoT) comprises physical devices—such as sensors, cameras, appliances, vehicles, medical equipment, and industrial controllers—that collect data, perform actions, and communicate with other devices or cloud services. Its distinctive assets include telemetry, control functions, device identities, and sometimes sensitive location, health, or operational data. Availability and integrity can be safety- or production-critical, while many devices have limited processing capacity, long service lives, and constrained maintenance access.
Security depends on the complete device lifecycle: maintain an accurate inventory, replace default credentials with unique authentication, verify firmware and provide signed, supportable updates, and restrict management interfaces through network segmentation. Exposed services, insecure update mechanisms, weak device-to-cloud APIs, physical access, and third-party components can enable unauthorized monitoring or control, compromise other systems, or conscript devices into attacks. Privacy protections should limit collection and access to telemetry, and monitoring should support detection and safe isolation without disrupting essential operations.
NIST announces that it will use Ascon as a cryptography standard for lightweight IoT device protection.
NIST weighs up algorithms for small devices – and an architecture for massive systems The US National Institute of Standards and Technology wants to protect all devices great and small, and is getting closer to settling on next-gen cryptographic algorithms suitable for systems at both ends of that spectrum – the very great and the very small.…
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced that ASCON is the winning bid for the "lightweight cryptography" program to find the best algorithm to protect small IoT (Internet of Things) devices with limited hardware resources. [...]
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced that a family of authenticated encryption and hashing algorithms known as Ascon will be standardized for lightweight cryptography applications