Sharing data over secure MQTT

A paramount concept in cyber security is how to secure data in transit and at rest. Data at rest means any information that is stored on a non-volatile memory, such as a flash or hard drive. Data can be structured data, for example, a SQL database, or any type of file. Data in transit means bytes that are being transferred over a medium, such as a wireless network. These definitions perfectly apply to IoT. Data is at every step of an IoT product, starting from collecting environmental data via sensors and transferring them to a backend or cloud service for further processing and storage. It doesn’t stop there; we would need to share it with other endpoints, such as mobile applications. The nature of data affects the product design decisions at every single step. Below is a list of items along with questions that we can ask during the design phase to help reveal the nature of the data:

• The type, frequency, and volume of data collected...