IoT Community announces formation of Security, Privacy & Trust IoT Center of Excellence (SPTIoTCoE)

The IoT Community (Internet of Things Community) unveiled the formation of its security, privacy and trust focused IoT Center of Excellence (SPTIoTCoE), which will be Co-Chaired by Nancy Shemwell, Chief Operating Officer of the IoT Community and Dipto Chakravarty, Chief Technology Officer at Exostar.

Ms. Shemwell previously served as the Chief Executive Officer at the cybersecurity firm, Vericlave, and currently serves as Chair of their Board of Advisors. Serving as Vice Chair of the CoE is Jason Cook, Managing Director at the Chertoff Group.

“I am honored to announce the formation of our SPTIoTCoE, and proud to work with industry experts Dipto and Jason,” said Ms. Shemwell. “Our charter is to provide meaningful, actionable IoT security input to established security frameworks and standards, provide industry master classes, use-cases, and best practice advice. This CoE will bring together a team of security icons whose knowledge in the Security, Privacy & Trust IoT domain will add a strong voice to the ever evolving effort to secure the IoT networks.”

The IoT Community also has established its 2019 master class panel of industry experts and academics who will provide input and peer reviews in developing practices for IoT standards and real-world use cases, with classes offered to IoT Community members throughout the year.

• Mike Saylor, President & Co-Founder of Cyber Defense Labs and university Professor: loT criminal/forensic best practices.
• Jeff Schmidt, CEO for identity assurance company Authomate: IoT privacy issues.
• Adam Isles, Principal at The Chertoff Group: Building an effective IoT framework leveraging MitreAtt&ck TTP.
• Mark Weatherford, SVP & Chief Cybersecurity Strategist at vArmour: 2019 legal and regulatory IoT environment.

“As the digital revolution is now upon us we are at an inflection point where lots of wonderful technology is being created, but counter to this is a significant increase in security risk,” states Mr. Cook. “Our CoE is creating value by providing a continuous feedback loop into the design, production, application of IoT with the intent that we make ‘things’ more secure. The CoE aims to collectively endorse, leverage and enhance security protocols and standards such as Mitre Att&ck, NIST, and Zero Trust frameworks.”

The initial areas of coverage that form the SPTIoTCoE pillars of excellence are:

• Security, Privacy & Trust Provider Strategy,
• IoT Security,
• IoT Privacy,
• IoT Trust,
• Security, Privacy & Trust Investments via VC-JV-PE (Venture Capital, Joint Venture, Private Equity).

Bringing home the need for thought leadership in this area, Mr. Chakravarty states, “As the scale of the Internet of Things continues to grow exponentially and becomes orders of magnitude larger than the Internet of Users, the impact of the power shift to the edge in today’s password-less economy becomes increasingly profound. IoT’s single lens view creates a ‘Wild West’ operating environment filled with insecurity, zero trust and the potential for private data leaks that’s downright scary. These are the challenges our Center of Excellence is addressing. It is imperative for organizations to join us as we collectively must define and adopt best practices for security, privacy and trust in the new era.”

“Security, privacy and trust issues remain the primary concerns and barriers to widespread IoT / IIoT uptake. Today we are delighted to announce the formation of our SPTIoTCoE, to be led by industry veterans in Nancy, Dipto and Jason, bringing deep domain expertise and know-how, to create a framework that can provide a solid pathway for cyber and IoT security practitioners, providers and institutions implementing IoT products and services, to get security right – instilling trust in consumers, and enterprises that the IoT is real, privacy issues can be tamed, and ultimately it can be made safe and secure,” said David Hill, executive director, IoT Community.