Practical Industrial Internet of Things Security

Identification

Identification is foundational to any access control system that requires entities (devices or people) to have a unique way to identify themselves to a system.

Definitions of the key terms are excerpted as follows from the Industrial Internet Security Framework (IIC-IISF):

• Identity: "Identity is an inherent property of an entity that distinguishes it from other identities."
• Entity: "An item with recognizably distinct existence."
• Credential: "Evidence to support a claim of identity."

Uniqueness is the key to a proper credential, so that the system will not confuse the entity with any other user of the system. Depending on the use case, there are a wide variety of identifiers. It can be as weak as a person's first and last ...