Intelligent Tech Channels Issue 16 | Page 30

INTELLIGENT CABLING Protecting the digital infrastructure IoT is expanding the attack surface of digital infrastructure, while deception technologies and artificial intelligence are solutions for its protection, explains Mechelle Buys Du Plessis, Managing Director UAE, Dimension Data. T he convergence between operational and digital technologies is well underway, being driven by the use cases around Internet of Things. Digitally enabling both new and old machines, devices, sensors, and other objects with connectivity, provides benefits not realised before. Real-life and real-time data is much more accessible on the edge of the network 30 and can be rapidly processed to give business insights and business benefit. This results in increased productivity, reduced operational costs, higher levels of safety, and overall better decision making, amongst others. While the gains are widespread and adoption is increasing in an exponential fashion, there is a downside to this rapidly snowballing trend. The fact is many sensor manufacturers are just not doing enough to secure their products by not including encryption in the product development stage. Since sensors are light weight objects with a low footprint, adding on additional security at a later stage may not be feasible. This inherent deficiency of large-scale object-based networks in the future, is going to drive the creation of deception technologies, to confuse intrusive malware through the presence of real and fake user identities. Transformative scale-out converged networks, including supervisory control and data acquisition control system architectures or SCADA, operational technologies, and wider IoT infrastructure, Issue 16 INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS