GSA is supporting the GSMA IoT Security initiative and is promoting these industry guidelines.
The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) is creating new service providers who are looking to develop new, innovative, connected products and services. Analysts have predicted that hundreds of thousands of new IoT services will connect billions of new IoT devices over the next decade. This rapid growth of the Internet of Things represents a major opportunity for all members of the new ecosystem to expand their service offerings and to increase their customer base.
Analysts have indicated that security issues are a significant inhibitor to the deployment of many new IoT services and, at the same time, the provision of wide area connectivity to an ever-widening variety of IoT services will increase the whole ecosystem’s exposure to fraud and attack. There is already much evidence to show that attackers are beginning to show ever greater interest in this area.
As these new service providers develop new and innovative services for particular market segments, they may be unaware of the threats their service may face.
The telecommunications industry, which the GSMA and GSA represents, has a long history of providing secure products and services to their customers. The provision of secure products and services is as much a process as it is a goal. Vigilance, innovation, responsiveness and continuous improvement are required to ensure the solutions address the threats.
To help ensure that the new IoT services coming to market are secure, the network operators together with their network, service and device equipment partners would like to share their security expertise with service providers who are looking to develop IoT services.
The GSMA has therefore created this set of security guidelines for the benefit of service providers who are looking to develop new IoT services.
