Celebrating the Global IoT Day, four H2020 projects – IoTAC, SerIoT, SecureIoT, and EU-IoT – organized a virtual roundtable discussion on 9 April 2021 to introduce their activities, and talk about the role of research in enhancing cybersecurity for IoT ecosystems and the potential contribution to industrial and societal development.
At the event, the EU-IoT project was represented by Dr John Soldatos from INTRASOFT International.
Importance of cooperation of research projects and of leveraging each other’s results was emphasised by the panellists. Ensuring the continuity is the right way forward meaning that when a project ends, its results should be carried over and continued by other research initiatives.
Sharing of research datasets is another important aspect given the difficulty and expense to find or generate them. Open access publications and open datasets provide further opportunities for collaboration and allow research projects to directly contribute to industrial development.
The panellists also agreed that research results should be validated in commercial environments and know-how transfers should be realized. Research-industry cooperation provides new testing opportunities and therefore, important feedback to the projects.
The future challenges for IoT and cybersecurity were also discussed. New technologies and the more widespread use of IoT will generate new threats, which we are going to fight with more and better tools. Security will become the major requirement when designing IoT devices. Special attention, however, should be paid towards training and awareness of the citizens. It is crucial to educate the users about security threats and vulnerabilities, and how they can protect themselves. These are a prerequisite to responsible behaviour. Basically, a new and strong cybersecurity culture needs to be established.
