Zero-Touch Onboarding: A Secure Solution for Enterprise IoT
By Martino Turcato
July 26, 2023
Solutions, Modules, Connectivity, Platforms
What Is Zero-Touch Onboarding for IoT?
The growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) presents severe security challenges. More are emerging as IoT systems’ scope and scale ramp up. In response, many IT managers now require manual provisioning for all IoT devices to ensure a secure network environment.
This method is preferable to the costs incurred by a security breach. Still, this slow process bears a substantial expense in time, effort and lost revenue, particularly for massive international deployments.
Start the First Mile of IoT™ with OneEdge™
A solution that offers a useful trade-off between security and business outcomes is zero-touch onboarding. Zero-touch onboarding allows connected devices to be configured at manufacturing with settings stored in a central source.
Once a device’s image appears on the network, its configuration settings are automatically installed without an engineer intervening. It gives deployment operators a much faster onboarding method while minimizing its attack surface.
Advantages of Zero-Touch Onboarding
Zero-touch device onboarding solves a critical IoT security issue. Default logins and passwords that users either don’t or can’t change make devices especially vulnerable to attacks. Zero-touch onboarding eliminates the need for passwords.
This solution can also play a significant role in maintaining privacy on the user’s end. It allows device authentication while protecting secret credentials. Therefore, attackers cannot access endpoint authentication information.
Automating device configuration reduces deployment management complexity and proneness to errors. These features are very appealing as device numbers grow to the hundreds, thousands and beyond. With manual onboarding, business utilization of the device must wait for installation and manual configuration. Then it must wait for IT on the backend to accept each device’s credentials and connect each one to its servicing system or cloud.
With zero-touch onboarding, devices are ready to run in seconds once you power them up. Deployment administrators can update them regularly and in large batches. These regular updates ensure they always have the latest security patches installed.
A trusted onboarding service like OneEdge can provide centralized device management, monitoring and troubleshooting for all deployed IoT devices. The time and expense savings can translate to significant ROI while maintaining critical network security protocols.
Remote, automated device configuration simplifies installation and allows rapid, wide IoT device deployment. Deployments You can scale up your deployment easily while maintaining system-wide protection.
The benefits of zero-touch onboarding make it ideal for IoT device provisioning in all but the smallest deployments. Its advantages include:
Automation and reduced complexity
Considerable savings in money, time and effort
A secure and trusted device fleet and network
Secure Integration to Connect and Manage IoT
OneEdge is a secure software suite. It offers IT and OT administrators access to:
- Centralized device and connectivity management
- Advanced edge processing capabilities
- Best-in-class end-to-end security
Speak with our IoT experts to learn how OneEdge can be integrated into your design.
Editor’s Note: This blog was originally published on 22 June 2020 and has since been updated.
