A Survey on Life-Cycle-Oriented Certificate Management in Industrial Networking Environments

Driven by the Industry 4.0 paradigm and the resulting demand for connectivity in industrial networking, there is a convergence of formerly isolated operational technology and information technology networks. This convergence leads to attack surfaces on industrial networks. Therefore, a holistic approach of countermeasures is needed to protect against cyber attacks. One element of these countermeasures is the use of certificate-based authentication for industrial components communicating on the field level. This in turn requires the management of certificates, private keys, and trust anchors in the communication endpoints. The work at hand surveys the topic of certificate management in industrial networking environments throughout their life cycle, from manufacturing until their disposal. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no work yet that surveys the topic of certificate management in industrial networking environments. The work at hand considers contributions from research papers, industrial communication standards, and contributions that originate from the IT domain. In total, 2042 results from IEEE Xplore, Science Direct, Scopus, and Springer Link were taken into account. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria and title, abstract, and full-text analysis, 20 contributions from research papers were selected. In addition to the presentation of their key contributions, the work at hand provides a synopsis that compares the overarching aspects. This comprises different proposed entity architectures, certificate management functions, involvement of different stakeholders, and consideration of life cycle stages. Finally, research gaps that are to be filled by further work are identified. While the topic of certificate management has already been addressed by the IT domain, its incorporation into industrial communication standards began significantly later and is still the subject of research work.