By leveraging our close integration with The @ Company, ZARIOT can offer an exciting, innovative solution to simply and securely manage IoT devices without the need for static IP address, IP ports or VPN and firewalling equipment.  

What is this @lternative option? 

Commonly, IoT devices use a VPN and fixed IP addresses to allow access for administration. However, this can become complicated and time consuming to manage.

Furthermore, the static IPs and open ports allow hackers to find and attack IoT devices by scanning the network. Protecting IoT devices against this requires comprehensive firewalling and other security implementations. 

The innovative alternative introduced by ZARIOT and The @ Company removes the need for fixed IP addressing and open ports for connectivity by using just a single device identifier and the unique functionality of the @ application.

This significantly reduces administrational overhead and mitigates security exposure, while reducing the need for additional VPN and firewalling security equipment. 

How does it work? 

The solution is possible as only outbound communication from @ enabled devices is used to contact the @ secondary server. The devices themselves initialise the interaction and establish the connection for each data transmission. This “origination only” communication policy negates the need to listen for an external connection through open IP ports. A device can truly lock down and ignore any attempts to interact with it.  

The short video below demonstrates a user accessing our demo Raspberry Pi device. The administrator uses the @platform to contact the secondary server, asking to initialise a session to the unique @ identifier of the demo device.

When that device next contacts the secondary server, the request is seen and actioned, and a session is established to the administrator’s laptop. In the video, this uses the SSH protocol, but within this anything can be applied, allowing you to patch, upgrade or interact in any other way you need to on the device.  

No IP, no ports, no problem 

The simple and secure management of IoT devices is key to solution success. However, the often very distributed and highly scaled nature of IoT can make it difficult. The @lternative solution SSH-No ports removes the need for static IP addresses and open ports and reduces reliance on VPN and firewalling equipment.

This simplifies administration and lowers overheads, all while protecting against security threats.