Fog computing and its cybersecurity concerns

Fog computing happens at the edge of the network. The Fog computing is a decentralized computing architecture where data is processed and stored between the source and cloud infrastructure. This technique reduces the transmission overhead between the source and cloud infrastructure by increasing the performance of cloud platforms. With the recent huge surge in the use of IoTs and overall global data usage, the demand for the fog computing is astronomical. While cloud security is the top concern in the minds of c-suite executives, there may be a need for executives to take a closure look at the security risks inherited down to fog computing. Fog computing platforms like edge computing, cloudlets, and micro-data centers are susceptible for security threats in Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA). All the core 12 security category concerns in cloud platforms will have similar impact in fog computing platform but the current security and privacy controls may not be that robust as the cloud platform. Devices connected to Fog nodes in fog computing raise security issues as there are many devices connected to multitude of different gateways. Even we implement tight authentication to establish the initial relation between these devices and nodes, the high chance of device malfunction can make it as a susceptible security target. Fog nodes collect sensitive user data from computers, but the amount of privacy controls implemented at these device levels are not at the scale of the privacy controls implemented in cloud infrastructure. IoT devices connected to computers can capture user data and they are connected to multiple gateways so any security breach will be having a domino effect. Another important worry is the IoT device location with user information which can be easily captured by a cyber-attack. There is lot of discussion about the cybersecurity threat for IoT devices and hopefully some good solutions will evolve in coming days. Thanks Kiran Palla