Industrial Internet Scoping Report

Citation
National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, Industrial Internet Scoping Report (Feb. 19, 2014) (full-text).

Overview
This Report summarized the work of the NSTAC’s Industrial Internet Scoping Subcommittee. The report revealed that in addition to Industrial Internet, IoT is referred to by several terms, including machine-to-machine communications, Internet of Everything, and cyber-physical systems.

In its report, the NSTAC described the IoT as an expansion of the global infrastructure through existing and evolving interoperable information and communication technologies that incorporates the interconnection of physical and virtual systems to enable new and automated capabilities. It also noted that the potential benefits of the IoT include the development of innovative services and, in many cases, more efficient use of infrastructure. However, it also found that the IoT has several security factors that Government and industry should consider, including an exponential expansion in attack surfaces, a changing threat landscape, privacy concerns, an increased potential for kinetic-focused cyber attacks, and changes to the hardware lifecycle.

The NSTAC concluded that these benefits and risks were already being recognized in the early deployment of IoT, thus necessitating a better understanding of the technology, the implications of existing and new policy structures, and the impacts on critical infrastructure security and resilience. Following this examination, the NSTAC established the IoT Research Subcommittee (IoTS) to study the cybersecurity implications of the IoT, within the context of NS/EP.