Introduction to the GSMA IoT Security Guidelines and Assessment

The GSMA, together with the mobile industry, has delivered a set of IoT Security Guidelines, backed by an IoT Security Assessment scheme, to provide a proven and robust approach to end-to-end security.

The GSMA IoT Security Guidelines provide best practice for the secure design, development and deployment of IoT solutions across industries and services. Addressing typical cybersecurity and data privacy issues associated with IoT services, the guidelines outline a step-by-step process to securely launch IoT solutions to market and keep them secure through their lifecycles – thereby creating a sustainable IoT ecosystem that is designed for end-to-end security.

The GSMA IoT Security Assessment provides a flexible framework that addresses the diversity of the IoT market, enabling companies to build secure IoT devices and solutions as laid out in the GSMA IoT Security Guidelines.

Both the GSMA IoT Security Guidelines and IoT Security Assessment have been updated by the industry to extend the scope to Mobile IoT technologies, specifically NB-IoT and LTE-M, the 3GPP industry standards for low power wide area technologies in licensed spectrum.

The primary audience for the IoT Security Guidelines are:

  • IoT Service Providers – enterprises or organisations who are looking to develop new and innovative connected products and services
  • IoT Device Manufacturers – who provide IoT devices to IoT service providers, in order to enable IoT services
  • IoT Developers – who build IoT services on behalf of IoT service providers
  • Network Operators – who provide services to IoT service providers.