Ground-breaking project delivers urgently needed solutions for IoT equipment and networks which are often vulnerable to cyber threats
The SYNERGIA project announce their Final Demonstration of five new innovative technologies for securing large scale, Smart City and Internet of Things (IoT) networks. The demonstration is at Future Space, Bristol on Monday 31st October 2022.
Conventional IoT devices are often low-cost, and battery powered and lack the processing resources for defence against cyber threats. These IoT networks transmit data to and from the Cloud for processing and storage. In addition to increased vulnerability to error and attack, this is just not sustainable for massively large-scale networks of resource-constrained devices.
The result of two years of development and testing, SYNERGIA’s new security techniques will be demonstrated on the UMBRELLA IoT platform provided by Toshiba Research’s Bristol Lab.
- Secure processing distributed at the network edge reduces the data transfer to the cloud enabling massively large-scale networks and reducing the ‘attack surface’.
- Distributed processing at the network edge is available as a service to end-users which provides complete privacy for multiple users of the same network.
- Secure configuration management of the entire network, partly using distributed edge processing, completely secures independent data streams to and from different types, and owners, of endpoint devices.
- Detection and management of intrusions in the IoT network and anomalies in data streams by distributed Artificial Intelligence: Machine Learning deployed at the network edge.
- Improved authentication and security for low power resource constrained IoT endpoint devices.
The SYNERGIA project was led by Toshiba Research’s Bristol Laboratory; alongside IOETEC who specialise in securing IOT endpoints; Smartia, AI specialists building a state-of-the-art industrial intelligence platform, developed innovations in network Intrusion detection systems; Configured Things mitigated threats to the Configuration management attack surface and provided the framework for secure data processing at the edge; Multiple Access Communications Limited (MAC Ltd) who are specialists in delivering wireless communications solutions and developed the SYNERGIA custom endpoint devices; and the University of Bristol’s Communication Systems & Network team.
SYNERGIA was funded by the commercial partners and Innovate UK’s Security of Digital Technologies at the Periphery (SDTaP) program.
Commenting on the upcoming demonstration, Mahesh Sooriyabandara, Director of Toshiba Research’s Bristol Laboratory said:
“This is a significant cyber security project, we look forward to demonstrating the excellent outcomes to many across a wide range of industries. We look forward to working with partners to deploy these solutions into the IoT market to provide enhanced security against cyber threats.”
Phil Day of Configured Things said:
“SYNERGIA has enabled us to develop and demonstrate how our approach to configuration management dramatically reduces the attack surface and increases resilience in complex distributed environments. Working with the other partners has given insights into integration with AI based automation. We now have several exciting opportunities to exploit the research commercially.”
George Oikonomou, Senior Lecturer and SYNERGIA Principal Investigator for the University of Bristol said:
“Resource-constrained wireless smart devices expose security vulnerabilities that, though patched in conventional IT systems, are still not being systematically addressed in the IoT. The time is right for SYNERGIA’s research, knowledge transfer and development of near-to-market solutions to secure IoT networks.”
Mauro Arruda of Smartia said:
“Smartia has used its cutting-edge AI capabilities to develop an Intrusion Detection System that successfully detects novel network intrusions at the edge. This technology is applicable to both IoT and traditional networks, and the final demonstration provides an opportunity to see this technology integrated with the other innovations developed in the SYNERGIA programme. The final demonstration will also showcase our industrial intelligence platform MAIO as it enables users to understand whether a network intrusion has been detected.”
Mark Davies of IOETEC added:
“The project complexity has required significant collaboration of the Synergia team which has enhanced Ioetec’s development program in securing IoT data. Our platform will contribute to the easier adoption by a trusted and secure environment, not only in the Connected places sector but in other large-scale deployments.”
Peter Gould of MAC Ltd commented:
“This project has provided MAC Ltd with a great opportunity to work with experts in various aspects of device security and to use our expertise in wireless communications solutions to address some of the key challenges associated with delivering robust and reliable IoT solutions.”
Join the SYNERGIA team on Monday 31st October 2022 at Future Space, Bristol.
Register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/synergia-demonstration-event-tickets-402311162517
For more information – please visit https://synergia.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/
