Isolating IoT Issues with ZeroTier

Last week I had the chance to catch up with ZeroTier . and their new CEO Andrew Gault . You may remember seeing that at Networking Field Day 27 in early 2022. They've definitely grown since then, including a Series A funding round this year led by Battery Ventures . You're probably already very familiar with the way that ZeroTier builds a peer-to-peer overlay network that makes devices appear to be on the same LAN. They have a free version that is used by thousands of users everywhere for a variety of applications.

What does ZeroTier offer in their services? Essentially, they are providing a control plane for their software. If you're using ZeroTier to connect a couple of offices or three printers it's easy to configure and maintain. Kind of like manually configuring a DNS hosts file on a server. Once you want to scale past a certain point you need something to help you make those connections and not spiral out of control. The SaaS-based platform has a custom user interface to help facilitate the administration of ZeroTier-connected clients. It's also outside of the data plane of communications so it doesn't break when there's lots of traffic.

IoT Explosion

During the briefing, I realized that ZeroTier has a handle on a very important aspect of connectivity that a lot of organizations aren't considering. Internet of Things (IoT) is growing faster than anyone can imagine. ZeroTier estimates there will be more than 31 billion IoT devices deployed by 2025. Organizations are deploying more and more industrial equipment and sensors that run isolated from the rest of the network. Given the small size of the devices and their price points there usually isn't a lot of intelligence built into them. That means they often have to sacrifice things like security to be affordable for deployment at scale.

You can search for any number of recent security incidents that show how unsecured IoT devices can be leveraged to create botnets for massive DDoS attacks. Some even come with hardcoded passwords that can't be changed, which creates even more security considerations. How can you control those devices knowing that any connection they have to your network can leave you open to attack and even make you a party to an attack on another organization?

That's where ZeroTier shines. They know that the best way to control the explosion of IoT devices is to create the control they don't have already. Instead of relying on other companies to build controls into useless devices, ZeroTier can create isolated networks that only allow those IoT devices to communicate with things you define. Those networks be can local or global. And those devices can be multi-homed to networks, meaning you can have multiple points of control and ensure that no one can sneak through to co-opt your systems for nefarious purposes.

One of the other things that Andrew brought up that I didn't even think about was the fact that most of these devices will not receive software support for long after they are released. That means that any coding errors or memory issues that would normally be removed by security patches won't happen. With the increasing sophistication of attacks targeting memory this could leave even the most secured IoT devices open after a few months or years, which is well within the lifetime of an industrial IoT device. ZeroTier can ensure that those devices are safely contained behind a firewall or security perimeter that prevents them from being scanner, accessed, and harvested.

I'm excited to see where ZeroTier is taking this technology on the enterprise side. Users love the flexibility that it offers and that familiarity will build into something that they want to take into their workplace. Once they hit the limitations that scale often enforces on everyone the natural expansion into the SaaS-based control plane will make it easier for security organizations to build on the expertise and continue to keep IoT devices safe.