IoT Connectors explained: Easy integration for data security

Managing and securing your IoT data can be both complex and lacking. IoT Connectors simplify this process, our powerful and flexible in-network solution for connecting your devices to the cloud.

Connectors are, in essence, a trusted smart proxy — a tricky concept that we’ll break down throughout this article to help you fully grasp its significance and power.

What are IoT Connectors?

Connectors are in-network optimization tools that offer a simple way to:

• Add encryption layers seamlessly
• Quickly adapt your IoT infrastructure
• Reduce data usage and power use

Connectors act as smart intermediaries within Onomondo’s network, bridging your device’s data with various endpoints like AWS IoT Core, Azure IoT Hub, or MQTT brokers. Think of them as your data’s dedicated smart passageway, ensuring it reaches its destination securely and efficiently.

How do Connectors work?

Connectors vary in complexity:

• Basic Connectors (e.g., TLS Connector): Quite similar to what stunnel does, it acts as a “dumb pipe” that simply adds a secure tunnel (e.g. a TLS tunnel) for your data.
• Advanced Connectors (e.g., AWS IoT Core Connector): These not only route data contained in the right encryption scheme and protocol but also manage device provisioning and status updates in your cloud environment. They function like an enhanced SDK built directly into our network.

The technical and business benefits of Connectors

Connectors are integrated within our mobile core network which has its technical advantages that meet the needs of your IoT product.

Less data

Devices can use simpler, lighter protocols, reducing data usage in the costly “last mile” of transmission. This translates to lowering data costs and improved battery life for your IoT fleet.

Flexible infrastructure

Need to change where your devices send data? With Connectors, rerouting a device to communicate with a new endpoint also becomes seamless as that part will be handled in the network. This significantly reduces the complexity of managing your IoT infrastructure.

Security improvements

All this can be done without sacrificing security. All communication between devices and Onomondo are encrypted by telecommunication standards and happens over private telecom networks, not the public internet. It will not beat end-to-end encryption trust-wise but security-wise it does have some advantages, such as handling certificate expiration and management. This is particularly beneficial in IoT settings where device resources are constrained and certificate updates can be challenging and potentially risky.

Real-world application: Connectors in action

This all sounds good and well but up until now we have only discussed how Connectors work and their benefit in a theoretical context. How would a potential setup using Connectors look from the device-side and server-side of things?

Let’s walk through a real-world example to illustrate how Connectors work:

Scenario: We have an IoT device using an Onomondo SIM, initially connecting to a simple TCP server.

To test this we have set up a device that has netcat installed and uses an Onomondo SIM in a USB modem. We have also set up a host that has a TCP server running on port 8000 and a TLS server on port 8443 using a self-signed certificate.

Step 1: Without a Connector, the device successfully reaches the server, but the data is unencrypted.

Now if we simply connect to the server on port 8000 without a Connector configured, the device reaches the TCP server as expected. The data is NOT encrypted when it reaches the host.

Step 2: We add a TLS Connector, configuring it with the appropriate certificates.

A TLS Connector encrypts the data. In broad strokes, you set it up by supplying a root certificate if you are using a self-signed certificate and then you attach the Connector to the SIM.

Step 3: We apply the Connector to the SIM.

After creating the TLS Connector, we apply it to the SIM via Onomondo’s API or web application.

Since we have directed the traffic coming in from this SIM to the TLS Connector, and onwards to the same host but on port 8443 instead, we should see something coming there if we rerun the same netcat command as before.

You can now see that nothing comes in on port 8000 on the host but some TLS data does come in on port 8443. This is still the case even though the device is making a TCP connection on port 8000.

That is the power of Connectors. You get to keep your last-mile traffic inexpensive while still having your data encrypted when it leaves Onomondo’s network.

Step 4: Reconfiguring the TLS Connector host.

Let us try out a last thing. Now we will reconfigure the TLS Connector to use a different host. We can do this by simply going back into the Connector on the platform and changing the host and port fields.

This host will be running the same TLS server as before with the same keys and so on, but on a whole new machine and another port.

Step 5: The result? By adding a TLS Connector, the device’s data is routed securely without modifying the device itself.

When the device makes a new connection it is now rerouted to the new host without having made any changes on the device-side.

Use Connectors to optimize and secure IoT data easily

In conclusion, Connectors provide an easy way for you to add an additional encryption layer from the cellular network and onwards, as well as the capability to quickly reroute data to a new endpoint.

By leveraging the capabilities of Connectors, you can focus on innovating with your IoT data, while we handle the complexities of secure, efficient transmission.

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