Best Practices In The IoT Workshop

August 3-4, 2017
Seattle, WA

Please save the date for the Best Practices in Home IoT Security workshop on August 3–4, 2017 at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. Indiana University (IU) and the University of Washington (UW) are convening this invitation-only workshop as the first in an annual series of four such workshops sponsored by the National Science Foundation as part of its five-year research investment “Living in the Internet of Things”. The focus of this event is IoT in the home, a setting which presents several unique challenges—intimacy of the context; potential exposure of vulnerable populations; diversity of family and social structures; the absence of professional technical support, or even technically proficient users; and so on—that differentiate it from the larger domain of cyber-physical systems.

The workshop will bring together a diverse set of stakeholders from industry, government, and academia to discuss security and privacy for IoT in the home. To facilitate the open exchange of ideas, the workshop will be held under the Chatham House Rule. The product of the workshop will be a summary document identifying (i) a consensus set of graduated best practices for security and privacy for IoT in the home, (ii) any gaps where best practices cannot yet be identified, and (iii) critical actionable items for the near term.  For example, this may comprise identifying existing best standards calling for encryption; defining this standard in terms of protocols and key length;  then building point and click guidance for ordering certificates with the appropriate strength for different devices and expected lifetimes. Any materials generated will be provided under Creative Commons licenses.

The discussions that take place at this inaugural workshop will inform the IoT research agenda at IU and UW over the four years, providing industry and government representatives with an opportunity to influence that agenda while sparking new collaborations and partnerships. It will also serve as a starting point for the subsequent workshops, which attendees of this workshop will also be invited to attend.

Preliminary agenda

Our goal is to support developers and inform consumers to create a more secure and private IoT. The agenda of the workshop is structured around a series of breakout and discussions. Anyone who has attended a conference at Dagstuhl or the Bellagio Center will find this structure familiar.

The first day of the workshop (August 3) will be a half day, beginning at noon with lunch followed by opening presentations from academic researchers and industry partners. After the opening presentations, workshop participants will split into breakout sessions focusing on a variety of IoT topics. Each breakout group will be provided with related best practices documents from other efforts. The groups will report back with a summary of applicable best practices, and a gap analysis, including suggestions on how best to fill those gaps and whether they are best filled by industrial or academic research.

The second day of the workshop (August 4) will be a full day, continuing where day one left off with additional presentations and breakout sessions. The afternoon will conclude with a discussion in which each breakout group outlines its recommendations for what should appear in the consensus document.

We look forward to seeing everyone there!

For more information contact the workshop organizer,  Joshua Streiff