Intel Aims to Simplify Provisioning and Authentication of IoT Devices

Provisioning a thing to be attached to the internet on average takes about 20 minutes, assuming everything goes correctly. That sounds simple enough until an organization decides it wants to attach hundreds of thousands of things to the internet. It quickly becomes apparent there isn’t enough tine in a year to accomplish the task.

Intel at an IoT Solutions World Congress announced Intel Secure Device Onboard (SDO), zero-touch software that developers can employ to programmatically provision devices attached to the Internet of Things (IoT).

Lorie Wigle, general manager of the IoT Group at Intel, says Intel SDO is based on Intel Enhanced Privacy ID (EPID) software that makes use of two-factor authentication techniques to ensure that only devices that are authorized are connected.

“It’s designed in a way that creates a train of trust,” says Wigle.

That train of trust is extensible, adds Wigle, because any time the ownership of a device changes hands, the device can be programmatically provided with new authentication credentials.

Intel, says Wigle, is working to make Intel SDO pervasively available across Intel and third-party processor platforms and the cloud services they ultimately connect with via a software development kit (SDK).

There’s no doubt at this point that the IoT represents the next great IT management and security challenge. It would be best for all concerned, however, if the providers of IoT devices and services started addressing those challenges before millions of those devices are distributed across the proverbial four corners of the earth.