https://www.iotworldtoday.com/wp-content/themes/ioti_child/assets/images/logo/footer-logo.png
  • Home
  • News
    • Back
    • IoT World 2020 News
  • Strategy
  • Special Reports
  • Galleries
  • Business Resources
    • Back
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
    • Industry Perspectives
    • Featured Vendors
  • Other Content
    • Back
    • IoT World 2020 News
    • Q&As
    • Case Studies
    • Features
    • How-to
    • Opinion
    • Video / Podcasts
  • More
    • Back
    • About Us
    • Contact
    • Advertise
    • Strategic Partners
  • IOT World Events
    • Back
    • Internet of Things World: San Jose
    • IoT World 2020 News
Iot World Today
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Home
  • News
    • Back
    • IoT World 2020 News
  • Strategy
  • Special Reports
  • Galleries
  • Business Resources
    • Back
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
    • Industry Perspectives
    • Featured Vendors
  • Other Content
    • Back
    • IoT World 2020 News
    • Q&As
    • Case Studies
    • Features
    • How-to
    • Opinion
    • Video / Podcasts
  • More
    • Back
    • About Us
    • Contact
    • Advertise
    • Strategic Partners
  • IOT World Events
    • Back
    • Internet of Things World: San Jose
    • IoT World 2020 News
  • newsletter
  • IIoT
  • Cities
  • Energy
  • Homes/Buildings
  • Transportation/Logistics
  • Connected Health Care
  • Retail
  • AI
  • Architecture
  • Engineering/Development
  • Security
ioti.com

Architecture


Getty Images

Image shows a 3D illustration of network wires and nodes.

Data Strategies for Efficient and Secure Edge Computing Services

If you want to exploit edge computing here are some data strategies to optimize and secure edge computing services.
  • Written by Dan Sullivan
  • 25th September 2020

Key Takeaways from this article include the following:

  • IoT systems are distributed, which brings new complexity and security risks.
  • Distributed systems need tiered strategies for data processing and storage. 
  • Edge computing architecture also requires new approaches for data at rest and in motion.

The challenges of building and properly managing an Internet of Things (IoT) network have grown alongside the benefits of the technology. At the end of the day, IoT is a distributed processing framework that comes with the challenges of distributed systems. As a result, developers and architects have to consider the business needs for the data (latency, security and volume requirements), cost and as well as other factors to best determine how to architect a distributed environment. 

Data Considerations for Edge Computing Services

There is a long list of design questions that comes with executing an IoT network: where does computation happen? Where and how do you store and encrypt data? Do you require encryption for data in motion or just at rest? How do you coordinate workflows across devices? And finally, how much does this cost? While this is an intimidating list, we can build good practices that have evolved both prior to the advent of IoT and more recently with the increasing use of edge computing.

First, let’s take a look at computation and data storage. When possible, computation should happen close to the data. By minimizing transmission time, you reduce the overall latency for receiving results. Remember that distributing computation can increase overall system complexity, creating new vulnerabilities in various endpoints, so it’s important to keep it simple. 

One approach is to do minimal processing on IoT devices themselves. A data collection device may just need to package a payload of data, add routing and authentication to the payload, then send it to another device for further processing. There are some instances, however, where computing close to the collection site is necessary.

One example of computing close to a sensor is in anomaly detection. If an IoT device is monitoring the equipment function, you want to know about a malfunction as soon as possible. 

On a factory floor, for instance, you may send sensor data to an edge device that analyzes data from all sensors on the floor so the analysis and alerts can be performed quickly after a malfunction and you can be alerted. If immediate analysis is not necessary, however, it may be more cost-effective to send data to a centralized ingestion point, such as an ingestion service in the cloud that then writes the processed data to a data store. This delayed option makes sense when collecting data to train machine learning models for example. Assigning data to different processing locations thus involves understanding the business purpose of the data, which helps you decide how to architect your networks for edge and cloud processing.

A two-tiered data transmission strategy is also an option. In this case, you will extract the most useful information from raw data, such as aggregates (e.g. sums, averages), or variations from baseline predictions and then transmit them using a low-latency network. Note that low-latency networks may cost too much to send large volumes of data that are not needed immediately. Alternatively, you can use batch file uploads of data collected at edge devices or ship disks (known as shuttles) from edge devices to a centralized data collection site.

Ensuring Security for Edge Computing Services

Computation and data transmission plans don’t get far without a proper security and encryption strategy. In the interest of business and personal confidentiality, use secure protocols for network transmissions, such as TLS  (Transport Layer Security) and X.509. Luckily, cloud providers typically provide encryption at rest, but consider whether you want a cloud provider to manage encryption keys or if you want to self-manage keys. When managing them yourself, you should also ask whether you will use a cloud provider’s encryption key infrastructure or your own. Finally, message digests ensure that there is no tampering from a source or while data is on the move.

For the user experience and day-to-day operations, coordinating workflows is crucial. Keeping workflows simple is the best way to make them functional and reliable. You can do so by spreading out responsibilities within the distributed system. 

You may use edge devices for pre-processing, for example, while ingestion services handle data collection more centrally. A best practice is to ensure that the ingestion service does minimal processing. Typically it will validate only source devices and authenticate messages, then write the data to a message queue or other persistent storage solution for further processing. 

Determining how you want to store data for long-term analysis is critical for workflow streamlining. Historical data can be especially useful for training machine learning models, such as anomaly detection tasks, and may be valuable. Finally, implement streaming workflows that utilize basic business processing logic, such as limits on how long to wait for late data transmissions and rules for how to handle missing data in a time series.

Controlling costs is the final piece of the distributed system puzzle. In particular, data processing and transfer costs will likely dominate your IoT network bill. However, there are ways to mitigate the cost of these operations. As costly as storage is, a tiered storage strategy is a powerful way to reduce costs. This strategy relies on keeping new data on fast and accessible, albeit expensive, devices such as solid state drives, while older data is stored on slower but lower-cost cold storage devices. A tiered storage strategy can aid the problem of data storage costs.

Developers and architects have many options when it comes to engineering IoT processing pipelines and the best choices are often driven by application specific constraints.

Tags: Cloud computing Edge computing Architecture Other Content Features

Related


  • IoT Edge Data Modeling Favors Speed Over Monolithic Solutions
    How data analysts should exploit edge data models for real-time data insight but also enlist the cloud for less time-sensitive tasks.
  • Image depicts data technology, wireless communications and the internet.
    Database Heterogeneity Helps Address IoT Analytics Challenges
    Developers turning IoT endpoint data into useful analytics have encountered proliferating built-for-purpose database types.
  • Digital health
    Health Care Edge Architecture Poised to Enhance Digital Patient Experience
    Health care organizations are enlisting edge computing architecture to bring information closer to patients and to digitize and improve care.
  • Image shows Internet of things (IoT) and networking concept for connected devices.
    IoT Automation Trend Rides Next Wave of Machine Learning, Big Data
    IoT automation has found new raison d’etre in the COVID-19 era.

Leave a comment Cancel reply

-or-

Log in with your IoT World Today account

Alternatively, post a comment by completing the form below:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related Content

  • Smart Hardware and Your Data Center
  • Why Blockchain Makes Sense in Supply Chain Management
  • Optimizing IoT Power Consumption
  • Return on 5G Infrastructure Investment Remains a Puzzle

News

View all

Private LTE Market Projected to Grow to $13 Billion

12th January 2021

IoT World Announces 2021 IoT World Advisory Board

9th December 2020

White Papers

View all

Zero Trust Manufacturing: Navigating Complex Supply Chains to Build Trusted IoT Devices

27th January 2021

IoTConnect and How to Get Started

27th January 2021

Special Reports

View all

Cybersecurity Protection Increasingly Depends on Machine Learning

28th October 2020

Webinars

View all

Weber’s Journey: How a Top Grill Maker Serves Up Connected Cooking

25th February 2021

From Insights to Action: Best Practices for Implementing Connected Device Security

15th December 2020

Galleries

View all

Top IoT Trends to Watch in 2020

26th January 2020

Five of the Most Promising Digital Health Technologies

14th January 2020

Industry Perspectives

View all

IoT Spending Holds Firm — Tempered by Dose of ‘IoT Pragmatism’

1st December 2020

The Great IoT Connectivity Lockdown

11th May 2020

Events

View all

IoT at the Edge

17th March 2021

Embedded IoT World 2021

28th April 2021 - 29th April 2021

IoT World 2021

2nd November 2021 - 4th November 2021

Twitter

IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

Zero Trust Manufacturing: Navigating Complex Supply Chains to Build Trusted IoT Devices dlvr.it/RrTDP4 https://t.co/fuH0GrHJrX

27th January 2021
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

PKI: The Solution for Designing Secure IoT Devices dlvr.it/RrTDNF https://t.co/KBWcsksAQi

27th January 2021
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

Five Guiding Tenets for IoT Security dlvr.it/RrTDGS https://t.co/Ss17Vn4sFw

27th January 2021
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

📢 Announcing #EIOTWORLD Silver Sponsor @ONETech_AI! 💡 Learn more about sponsoring Embedded IoT World here:… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

27th January 2021
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

IoTConnect and How to Get Started dlvr.it/RrT1gl https://t.co/6Vci1hvOV2

27th January 2021
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

RT @IoTWorldToday: #IoTsecuritytrends in 2021 will feature new threats given #remotework, #digitalhealth and #edgecomputing. https://t.co/S…

27th January 2021
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

#IoTsecuritytrends in 2021 will feature new threats given #remotework, #digitalhealth and #edgecomputing.… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

25th January 2021
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

Protecting Your Network Against Ripple20 Vulnerabilities dlvr.it/RrJhpD https://t.co/Q2xe5hoy4U

25th January 2021

Newsletter

Sign up for IoT World Today newsletters: vertical industry coverage on Tuesdays and horizontal tech coverage on Thursdays.

Special Reports

Our Special Reports take an in-depth look at key topics within the IoT space. Download our latest reports.

Business Resources

Find the latest white papers and other resources from selected vendors.

Media Kit and Advertising

Want to reach our audience? Access our media kit.

DISCOVER MORE FROM INFORMA TECH

  • IoT World Series
  • Channel Futures
  • RISC-V
  • Dark Reading
  • ITPro Today
  • Web Hosting Talk

WORKING WITH US

  • Contact
  • About Us
  • Advertise
  • Login/Register

FOLLOW IoT World Today ON SOCIAL

  • Privacy
  • CCPA: “Do Not Sell My Data”
  • Cookies Policy
  • Terms
Copyright © 2021 Informa PLC. Informa PLC is registered in England and Wales with company number 8860726 whose registered and Head office is 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG.
This website uses cookies, including third party ones, to allow for analysis of how people use our website in order to improve your experience and our services. By continuing to use our website, you agree to the use of such cookies. Click here for more information on our Cookie Policy and Privacy Policy.
X