# Analysis of Security Issues and Countermeasures for the Industrial Internet of Things
## 5 Discussion and Future Research Direction  
IoT devices are an integral part of an IIoT system. However, IIoT is designed for heavy-duty tasks, for instance, manufacturing, monitoring, and maintenance in an industrial  
Figure 8: A simple outline of a DCapBAC process discussed in [166]. setting. IIoT devices can be seen as more durable and resistant to specific criteria, e.g., heat, cold, etc. However, this is to note that the IoT and IIoT share the basic principles of data management, network communication, security, infrastructure, etc. That said, the primary difference between IoT and IIoT is the scale of data and their management issues [13]. We observe that security is a significant concern for the deployment of IIoT systems at scale. The present IIoT architectures lack the ability to address all of the security issues that we devised in this paper. That said, these architectures are not able to deploy a generic and scalable solution that can address all of these possible threats and attacks in a consistent and comprehensible way. This further reinforces the employment of system-specific security solutions based on the context and requirements. This can intuitively structure and manage those requirements (service and applications) of both the service providers and service consumers [169]. In Table 1, we summarize various security issues along with their potential countermeasures in different layers in an IIoT architecture. Note that it is also possible to have the same security issues in two or multiple layers of an IIoT architecture. However, their context and requirements may be different. One of the major research questions that have arisen is: which is the base layer of the security in this architecture? We observe that each layer has its distinct characteristics to address various threats and attacks. For instance, in the network layer, network firewalls and protocols can manage high-level traffic controlling through the Internet, but the challenge is how to protect the resource-constrained embedded IoT device's deeply embedded endpoint from possible threats and attacks in the perception layer? Some of the existing security solutions attempt to improve security in each device by embedding them into IoT objects. However, this requires changing the existing communication mechanisms and protocols. Further, these embedded solutions aim at enhancing encryption, authentication, and key management. This does not seem feasible to deploy on a large scale because this requires additional costs compared to the cost of IIoT systems and resource-intensive overheads in terms of computational processing and power consumption. There could also be a redesign of the physical structure, but this may not be a feasible option for some IIoT systems due to their high-security issues. Our study presents a comprehensive discussion on the potential threats and attacks in an IIoT system that widely covers attributes, including devices, users, services, resources, and applications. In addition, an IIoT system typically needs to be monitored in real-time from virtually anywhere. It is fundamental for monitor manufacturing processes, including discrete and process manufacturing. This aspect also needs to be considered for better decision-making [170]. Our study covers threats and attacks on communications between various devices and users in an IIoT system. The communications in IIoT occur via wired or wireless mediums, and this communication channel is a potential target point for an attacker to enter into the system. For instance, an attacker can absorb network traffic and redirect the routing path to an insecure destination. We also argue that the attackers can further attack a communication without redirecting the whole data packet; instead, the attackers can infect selected data packets for specific information. Finally, an attacker can flood the network with unnecessary data packets to collapse the bandwidth or resources of an attacked system, which will consequently impact the performance of the complete system [171].