How the Internet of things(IoT) drives competitive
advantage and establishes
new business models
How the Internet of Things drives competitive advantage
and establishes new business models

ContentsBusiness drivers

3Retrofit

3Security

4The solution

5

Why choose the OpenText IoT platform?

7

About OpenText

7

Connect with us

7

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The business drivers and potential gains from IoT solutions are numerous. Thebusiness may improve quality of process and operations, reduce downtime,
respond to real-time alerts and maintenance issues, and gain greater visibility
into assets and production. These are just a few of the possible improvements
to the top and bottom line. But the cost of installing new IoT-enabled equipment
can be a barrier and existing equipment or assets are functional and may not fully
depreciated. The challenge is how to cost-effectively and securely IoT enablelegacy equipment. This paper will explain the technical approach to removing thatbarrier and open the door to future benefits.

Business drivers
There are many business drivers compelling Industrial (IIoT) implementation anddigital transformation. By 2025, 60% of manufacturers will use IoT platforms withdigital innovation platforms to operate networks of asset, product, and process
digital twins for a 25% reduction in cost of quality1. Additional business drivers forconsidering Industrial IoT can assist or augment are:
• Reduced asset downtime• Improved process performance• Improved rapid service response• Increase operational reliability and quality control• Deploy fewer on-site personnel, control hazardous environments• Respond to real-time alerts on environmental risks• Remote asset monitoring• Operational insights for better resource management• Regulatory compliance

Retrofit
Investments in new equipment solely to enable digital transformation are difficult
to justify. The retrofit of sensors to existing equipment, or gather data for IoT fromexisting equipment, is a compelling alternative. There are additional benefits andreasons for retrofitting existing equipment.
One such benefit is the realization that productivity decreases as assets age. Olderequipment has increasing planned and unplanned downtime. Retrofitting existing
equipment with IoT technology enables greater visibility into how assets function
and how operations can be predictive and efficiently plan and reduce costly
downtime. Furthermore, this enables the business drivers described above to berealized and expanded.

1 IDC FutureScape: Worldwide IoT 2020 Predictions, October 2019.

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The Internet Society’s Online Trust Alliance reports that cyber incidents cost $45B
annually. The report further mentions that the vast majority could be avoided
through the implementation of proper approaches improving security2.
The OWASP (The Open Web Application Security Project) Internet of Things
Project provides a context and framework in which to make better securitydecisions3. When implementing a retrofit gateway solution, the framework suggests
consideration of the following attack vectors:
1. Secure Network Services—The gateway, at a minimum, will interface with both
the retrofit sensor devices and equipment as well as the IoT cloud server andservices. Also include these considerations in any implementation.
a. Strict adherence to local protocol standards with anomaly detection andreporting. In other words, if an inbound message does not adhere or meetthe established local protocol standard it must issue an alert with diagnostic
information and should be reported to the IoT cloud server an/or logged locallyfor further investigation.
b. Establish mutual authentication between the gateway client software and thecloud server.
2. Secure data at rest and in motion—The gateway will perform some compute,storage and transmission functions. Each of these systems and functions must beprotected by encryption.
a. Compute—Attestation for activation of a trusted execution environment (TEE).
b. Storage—Disk encryption and TEE.
c. Transmission—In addition to mutual authentication with transmission servers, theprotocol should leverage transport layer security (TLS) and common encryption
protocols such as Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), simon, or others.
3.Ability to update the gateway software or firmware remotely via over-the-air
updates (OTA) is necessary to defend against evolving security threats.
4.Physical Hardening—The gateway software will reside within a physicaldevice. The device should be tamperproof to prevent easy access to internal
components. Main processor manufacturers such as ARM, Intel and AMD, support
the TEE approach to isolated execution and prevent tampering.
5. Device Lifecycle Management—This is necessary to properly maintain and monitor
the health, status and audit of the gateway and the associated sensors. This is asystem that not only provides full lifecycle management but is designed to support
the virtual digital twin and will make the IoT ecosystem more scalable and secure.
Most importantly, because the solution will include the use of insecure anddisparate components that were not designed for IoT security, it is critical that theretrofit solution leverage a method to uniquely identify the equipment. The solution
must include some form of device attestation to enable strict data governance.

2Internet Society, Internet Society’s Online Trust Alliance Reports Cyber Incidents Cost $45B in 2018, July 09 2019

3Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP)How the Internet of things (IoT) drives competitive advantage and establishes new business models

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The solution
Protocol conversion
As has been previously described, the core function of the gateway is to be a
protocol translator. This protocol translator is a combination of hardware andsoftware to allow the data to flow securely from one discrete network to another.

Ethernet
SerialLog-file

OPC
THREAD

DeviceAttestation

OpenText IoT
Cloud Gateway

Edge Analytics

MODBUS

Message QueueCUSTOM

Rules

Trusted
Execution
Environment

Diagram 1
Diagram 1 illustrates the logical architecture of a retrofit IIoT deployment. The
gateway will receive messages from installed, retrofit sensors via a local network
interface or other hardwire standard such as twisted pair, serial or parallel i/obus. Inbound messages will be decoded by the local protocol converter fromnative protocol such as OLE for Process Control (OPC), MODBUS, Thread or otherstandard or custom communication method. Within a secure trusted execution
environment, the gateway software will then take the standardized message, map
the data through the semantic layer. Given a canonical version of the device data,
the gateway may apply real-time analytics and rules before forwarding messages tothe cloud based IoT platform.
Device attestation
To this point this paper has described the retrofit concept and how it can enablevisibility to operating technology that was previously unconnected. Achieving
this connectivity, existing equipment, not yet IoT-enabled, will be connected tothe internet via a gateway. A gateway acts as the hub and translator of sensor ormachine data and communicates it to the cloud for actionable insights.
The challenge is to uniquely identify each device, machine, or sensor and the data
sourced from each as being unique in this new ecosystem. When you consider themillions of devices possible in an extended ecosystem, this can be a herculean
effort and is often overlooked. An identity-centric IoT platform, leveraging strong
authentication systems and processes can address this challenge and allow tothe establishment of a unique, digital identity, or a “digital twin” of any entity in anecosystem, be it a person or a system. In this case, the entity is a device or a pieceof equipment. It is the “thing” within the Internet of Things.
When equipment or a device is manufactured and IoT enabled, it will have a unique
identifier (for example, a media access control address (MAC) or International
Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number) built in. Many software systems use theUniversally Unique Identifier (UUID) or Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) standards.
Common network equipment often use MAC or other Extended Unique Identifier (EUI)
standard to identify and provision allowable equipment to interact within a defined
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network architecture. The gateway hardware itself will have a unique, standardsbased network identifier, but the legacy equipment and sensors attached to thegateway will be numerous and without a standard identifier.
Device attestation is the action where a human will interact with the IoT system toverify the identity of the equipment. When this occurs, the system will generate unique
identifiers for the associated equipment and then as equipment and sensor messages
are received, the system will associate the unique identity with those messages.
Why is a unique identity in IoT so important? Data quality begins with device validity
and is at the core of any successful and secure IoT project. A critically important
aspect of the quality of data is uniqueness. Knowing that the information is uniquely
identifiable, its context and thus other aspects of that data including origination,validity, timeliness and consistency are amplified and can be securely orchestrated.
Security and device attestation
Like any other authentication, device attestation should employ expected andestablished security best practices. Identity governance should be centralizedwith delegated administration. In other words, those with the authority to attest
for a device should have their identity governed by a central authority. Corporate
security policy and administration should be applied to the user identity. This way
the identity and associated entitlements may be granted, suspended or removed
when appropriate (e.g. an employee changes from a designated role, leaves theorganization or a machine goes offline for a set period of time).
Furthermore, when centrally controlled, each authentication will be supported
by advanced multifactor authentication. The identity usage may be monitored
to detect anomalies (e.g. an attempt to authenticate when equipment should beoff-line or from a remote location). Leveraging this centralized approach, additional
best practices such as audit and forensics may be employed.
Filtering and anomaly detection
The primary use case for nearly all IoT solutions begins with analysis of data.
Instinctually one might assume that more data is better. We know that in precisionengineering and manufacturing a high level of control is necessary to achieve therequired levels of quality. But there is a cost consideration when transmitting large
amounts of data over the internet in order to centralize analysis.
As IoT quality algorithms and control loops become more mature, IoT-driven
solutions can better define the steady state. In other words, as these retrofit
Industrial IoT solutions move beyond the initial use case, operators andstakeholders will be able to know when systems and processes are in control
and data scientists can establish thresholds to maintain that control. The local,
identified and attested sensor network will provide critical operating technology
data in real-time to applications and systems to monitor that steady state. In simple
terms, there is no need to continuously report that the lights are on, only send andalert if the lights go off or change from the desired operating state.
OpenText defines big data in terms of variety, velocity and volume. Simple edge
analytics will trigger rules to drive actions. Locally, the data is coming at a high volume
and velocity and will need to be integrated and stored. Forwarding large data volumes,
especially unstructured data to the cloud is inefficient. The edge gateway will monitor
the steady state until certain thresholds are passed. Established rules will indicate
an undesired or possibly an interesting state, or that an operation could be out ofcontrol. When this occurs, the gateway needs to initiate granular and permissible
communication to the cloud so action can be taken to address the situation.
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Why choose the OpenText IoT platform?
Authenticating an ecosystem of things requires experience and understanding ofthe complex web of relationships between them. The interaction of people, systems
and things requires dynamic control of what each unique thing can do, with whomand when. The OpenText IoT Platform is massively scalable and delivers securedata integration, exchanging millions of messages per second, between millionsof things, in realtime. It allows organizations to design for the future by connecting
manufacturers to products, while providing robust security and connectivity.
OpenText IoT Services accelerate secure, scalable connected product solutions,enabling organizations to register and manage physical things and create solutions
that connect their people and systems with the integrated world. The OpenText
IoT Platform provides an identity-centric approach needed to securely monitor
the status or condition of products and equipment, create secure interactions andintegrations, and manage the identity lifecycle of connected things.

About OpenText
OpenText, The Information Company, enables organizations to gain insight throughmarket leading information management solutions, on-premises or in the cloud. For
more information about OpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTEX) visit: opentext.com.

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