At the annual IoT Solutions World Congress in Barcelona, Intel has announced a new onboarding service to speed up and secure the process of connecting multiple devices.
Intel also set a new IoT deployment projection, estimating that there’ll likely be 30 million connected devices by 2020, far lower than the original forecast of 50 million.
According to a statement, the scaled-down outlook is a result of real-time issues of scaling deployments and security. The response is Intel’s launch of Secure Device Onboard (SDO).
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Innovative solution
The tech giant’s new Secure Device Onboard service automates and connects IoT devices to the internet within seconds, instead of several hours.
This service is being targeted at IoT platform providers who wish to offer it as a service to customers who may want to onboard thousands of internet-enabled objects.
Intel SDO is based on a so-called “zero touch” model, allowing devices to register and recognize the customer’s IoT platform account during the power-on stage. As well as this, users also don’t have to preload provisioning configurations for every connected device installation – saving time and energy.
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A security focus
Security is one of the biggest concerns in IoT, so this is something Intel clearly takes seriously. The SDO comes with the firm’s IoT identity solution.
Called Enhanced Privacy ID (EPID), it prevents hackers from discovering the identity of the device owner by anonymously authenticating the device and creating an encrypted communication tunnel.
Since 2008, more than 2.7 billion EPID keys have been distributed in Intel and non-intel MCU processors. Companies like Infineon and Cypress Semiconductor are also planning to implement this technology in their hardware.
The service will automatically link the device to the owner’s preferred IoT platform. Cloud service and device management companies like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure plan to support SDO.
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Breakthrough onboarding technology
Tom Lantzsch, senior VP and leader of Intel’s Internet of Things Group, said the company is excited to bring this breakthrough model to market in a bid to scale all IOT ecosystems.
“Intel provides the industry with a comprehensive portfolio of products, technologies, and roadmaps for building and deploying interoperable market-ready solutions… edge to fog to cloud,” he said.
“Intel Secure Device Onboard delivers the first step by connecting the unconnected, with maximum security designed in, and low implementation complexity.”
Antony Passemard, head of IoT product management at Google Cloud, said: “Google Cloud Platform (GCP) has partnered with Intel to launch the Intel SDO solution.
“At power on, our customers will be able to automatically, and securely, register devices and stream data into GCP for faster command, control, and analytics.”
Colin Tait, IT director at Weatherford, added: “The Intel SDO and Device Cloud enables us to create a secure, scalable oilfield ecosystem from zero-touch onboarding to continual gateway management.”