The Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) is releasing new recommendations and advice for the trustworthiness of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The organization details the importance of trustworthiness as well as how to measure, analyze and assess it in a new white paper, Managing and Assessing Trustworthiness for IIoT in Practice.
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“The fact is that it is possible to have ‘too much’ trustworthiness,” said Jim Morrish, co-chair of the IIC Business Strategy and Solution Lifecycle Working Group. “Trustworthiness costs, in terms of the costs of devices and associated software, and also often in terms of user experience and functionality. A trustworthiness solution for a nuclear processing plant would be an unnecessary hindrance to the day-to-day operations of a peanut butter manufacturer.”
The paper addresses four phases: baselining the system, analyzing potential trustworthiness events, implementing trustworthiness targets and governance, and iterating and maintaining the resulting trustworthiness model.
According to the IIC, trustworthiness includes safety, security, privacy, resilience, and reliability of the system, and how each of these characteristics interaction with one another.
“Managing trustworthiness means understanding the trustworthiness characteristics (safety, security, privacy, reliability and resilience) in the context of a given IIoT system, defining objectives and metrics, determining what evidence is required to confirm the characteristics are providing their needed contribution to operations, assessing trade-offs between these properties, and their corresponding effect on business and operations,” the IIC wrote in the paper.
The paper also goes over a live example of an IIoT system and analyzes it from a trustworthiness perspective. For instance, Fujitsu’s Factory Operation Visibility and Intelligence (FOVI) system is designed to give plant managers greater visibility in near-real time. It also aims to reduce human errors, increase predictability and optimize production.
“FOVI highlights how the different aspects of trustworthiness can impact business performance,” said Jacques Durand, director of engineering and standards at Fujitsu, co-chair of the IIC Business Strategy and Solution Lifecycle Working Group. “For instance, slowing down a production line can reduce costs associated with stress on machinery and machine operators, but such a course of action may also adversely impact productivity or lead time. In the white paper we highlight the need to understand trade-offs and to use metrics in a data-driven and intelligent manner.”
Other details include best practices for managing trustworthiness, managing trustworthiness objectives, and trustworthiness over time.
