Internet of Things (IOT) Onboarding Capability (IoTOC) - Phase II

The Air Force is addressing the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and the data they are generating from locations worldwide to fight and win tomorrow’s battles. Military operations face numerous “big data” challenges that require new methods for conducting high fidelity testing and evaluation, yet there is no known developmental testing environment addressing IoT/Industrial IoT (IIoT) devices, their placement within a network, the voluminous data they produce and other ancillary challenges within the Air Force. The Internet of Things Onboarding Capability (IoTOC) and the underlying framework for IoT/IIoT/Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) evaluation are specifically intended to address this demand signal.  IoTOC Phase II will apply the model developed in Phase I to a variety of use cases, identify benefits/shortfalls and refine the model for scaling to support onboarding of IoT/IIoT/IoBT devices.  Further, the Phase II team will incorporate a probabilistic approach that can be used to assess and assign risk to IoT/IIoT implementations proactively and quantitatively. Without such a comprehensive approach, organizations currently implement IoT/IIoT projects in an ad hoc manner, which can then introduce device, as well as system to system security risks that may not be anticipated. Such implementations can obscure the system’s attack surface and place sensitive military information, systems, and Defense Critical Infrastructure (DCI) at great risk of being penetrated and exploited. The provisioning of tools for test and validation, as well as technical expertise in IoT/IIoT/IoBT DT&E, are needed to harden future IoT effort solutions.