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Making IoT Connectivity Secure and Simple for Retailers

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Intel IoT and Asavie* enable rapid business growth with a streamlined IoT platform and multilayer security.

"By addressing the secure network connectivity and integration challenges from edge devices to the cloud, we are providing companies with a flexible and affordable means of exploiting transformational IoT opportunities across many market sectors."

—Lars Jerkland, VP OEM, Asavie

Executive Summary

The Internet of Things (IoT) unleashes valuable business insights through data that’s gathered at every level of a retail organization. With IoT and data analytics, retailers now have the capability to gather insight into customer behavior, offer more personalized experiences, achieve better inventory accuracy, create greater supply chain efficiencies, and so much more. But with data comes great risk. A recent report by security firm Thales and 451 Research found that 43 percent of retailers have experienced a data breach in the past year, with a third reporting more than one breach.1

Intel® technology-based gateways and Asavie, a provider of next-gen enterprise mobility management and IoT connectivity solutions, offer a security connectivity solution that minimizes the effort and cost to businesses to ensure safety from cybersecurity attacks. In addition, the Intel/Asavie IoT solution provides retailers with a solid basis to build their smart, connected projects:

Analytics

Real-time diagnostics and monitoring of all connected devices so retailers can track and resolve any issues, ensure reliable service connectivity, and optimize service delivery.

Connectivity

Simplify rollout and network management and ensure high availability.

Administration

Centrally define automated rules to comply with existing policies but dynamically add new policies to control what devices connect to and which services are permitted in the network.

Scaling

Go from a single device to hundreds of thousands—and beyond. The award-winning Asavie PassBridge* platform is designed from the ground up to scale cost-effectively and rapidly.

Cost control

Automated monitoring of service usage, paired with usage and data plan control, helps businesses manage how much they spend, to budget accurately, and ensure devices are operating at the highest possible efficiency.

Challenges

Today’s retail stores are highly connected digital hubs, with large amounts of data transfer originating from and traveling back and forth among numerous locations: the store floor, stockroom, point of sale, corporate headquarters office, security systems, digital signage, refrigeration sensors, cloud-based e-commerce platforms, and more. The constant threat of a security breach and new digital data regulations make it imperative that sensitive customer and corporate information are never exposed.

In addition, connectivity is the lifeblood of modern retail success; any loss in connectivity will greatly affect operations, revenue, and costs. The challenge is to deliver a highly available and reliable connection for numerous remote site locations.

Another formidable challenge is the speed at which today’s marketplace is evolving. Retailers must respond sooner and be ready to scale with flexible "anytime, anywhere" connectivity. As more in-store procedures become digitized, the overarching network architecture must be able to scale without needing continuous rearchitecting or disruption to existing services.

Solution

Gateways future-proof retail business connectivity
Figure 1. Intel® technology-based Advantech gateways future-proof retail business connectivity

Asavie PassBridge is a cloud-hosted, software-defined IoT connectivity management platform built on x86 hardware. Unlike IoT connectivity management platforms that focus solely on the provisioning and decommissioning of SIMs, Asavie PassBridge offers more than basic internet access, delivering on-demand connectivity services designed to secure and manage connectivity across heterogeneous networks at scale. Asavie PassBridge offers configurable, secure private IP networks as a service via private APNs to the cloud. It enables users to orchestrate and configure their own customized secure network environment, off the public internet, for 1 to 100,000s of devices in seconds.

A key advantage of the Asavie PassBridge technology is its multipronged approach to security, in which it acts as both a trust authority and a traffic manager. Only authenticated Intel Advantech Gateways can attach to the private network, enabling a highly available and connected store with the right level of compute power and memory for multiple connectivity options. Asavie’s integrated network-layer-based security helps streamline hardware so that only the Intel Advantech Gateway needs to be deployed in each store.

The Intel technology-based Advantech Gateway series includes a built-in cellular modem to support cellular WAN-like connections, making it ideal for remote locations where physical wired connectivity is not possible. The cellular connection can also be used as an alternative or secondary network path to ensure continuity of key data services in the store. In addition, administrators can easily apply dynamic traffic management policies to the cellular WAN connection, ensuring key business flows are maintained while eliminating unnecessary data flows and avoiding excessive data costs in times of network failover.

In addition, with the Intel Advantech Gateway, it’s possible to gather valuable maintenance and status information at the store edge. By seamlessly connecting key systems such as refrigeration, point of sale, and inventory management, retailers can make automated and intelligent decisions in store.

The Intel/Asavie solution allows store owners to benefit from the ease of install and flexible interface configurations for a streamlined process to interconnect store appliances securely. Retailers can connect remote locations to many application services running on-premise or in the cloud using Asavie’s private connectivity to services such as AWS or Microsoft Azure*.

Key Benefits

  • Delivers real-time diagnostics and monitoring of all connected devices to ensure reliable services.
  • Supports dynamic traffic management policies.
  • Ability to subtenant the local area network in store, minimizing the exposure to security threats inside the store.
  • Small gateway footprint and single gateway per store simplifies install in a compact retail environment.
  • Ideal for remote store locations where physical wired connectivity may not be possible.
  • Cellular WAN connectivity means centralized provisioning and management are possible for hundreds of connected stores, all from an intuitive web-based GUI.
  • Bidirectional connectivity facilitates remote debug of store problems.

How It Works in Brief

Asavie end users are assigned an account on Asavie PassBridge, which is accessible via an intuitive web-based user interface (UI), Asavie IoT Connect. The setup requires minimal expertise to get started with a secure and private network. The UI presents a list of templated setups to the end user, from which the user can choose an appropriate network topology that suits their needs.

To get started, users simply select a network type from the available list, which includes:

Private network

All application traffic is terminated on the on-premise server.

Secure internet

Controlled access is given to the internet, with extra security around domain names in use.

Cloud service connector

Seamless edge-to-end-user cloud serverless services.

Hybrid

A mix of secure internet and private networks.

Asavie PassBridge automatically orchestrates the network of choice, which will include the private static IP address pool and unique assignments to the SIM cards in the associated account. Network initialization will also include any security policies selected as part of the configuration setup.

Within minutes, the end user’s gateways will be automatically enrolled into the private network. Further security can then be applied, which includes data controls with event-driven notifications, alerting the user to data anomalies at each connected gateway.

Furthermore, Asavie IoT Connect provides an easy-to-understand observation dashboard providing insights into the overall deployment status, connectivity health, and any anomalies.

About Asavie

Asavie makes secure connectivity simple for any size of mobility or IoT deployment in a hyperconnected world. The Asavie PassBridge* platform powers on-demand services for the secure and intelligent distribution of data to connected devices anywhere. This enables enterprises to harness the power of the Internet of Things and mobile devices to transform and scale their businesses.

Conclusion

The Intel/Asavie solution helps retailers significantly reduce security risks and costs for existing and new store configurations by reducing the requirement to just one physical access gateway. With security and connectivity features rolled into one solution, the Intel/Asavie IoT solution greatly streamlines install to a simple plug-and-play connection out of the box for better reliability and service, no matter where the store is geographically located.

Your Best IoT Retail Solutions Are Built with Intel® Technology

Accelerate the time to solution deployment and simplify the path to cost savings, new efficiencies, inventory accuracy, smarter marketing, and better customer experiences with an end-to-end solution based on Intel technology.

Learn More

For more information about Asavie IoT solutions for retail, please visit asavie.com.

For more information about Intel® IoT Technology and the Intel® IoT Solutions Alliance, please visit intel.com/iot.

References

1. 2017 Thales Data Threat Report, Global Edition


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