There’s a moment that every successful product builder experiences when your proof-of-concept becomes a pilot, your pilot becomes an initial deployment, and suddenly you’re looking at scaling from hundreds of devices to thousands, or even tens of thousands, across multiple continents.
I’ve been on countless calls with companies at this inflection point. They’ve proven their product works, secured funding or executive buy-in, and the market is pulling them forward. Reality sets in; the security approach that worked for 50 devices in a controlled environment won’t cut it for 5,000 devices deployed across factories in Asia, distribution centers in Europe, and field sites in North America.
As the world becomes more connected through internet-enabled devices, we face the reality that security breaches can bring down city infrastructure, production lines, and even people’s homes. According to recent research, more than half of organizations with IoT devices face targeted cyberattacks every week. In the manufacturing sector alone, an average of 6,000 IoT malware attacks occur weekly. Even more sobering: 89% of organizations using IoT and connected products have already experienced successful cyberattacks, with each incident costing an average of $250,000.
But here’s what keeps me up at night on behalf of our customers: it’s not just the frequency or cost of attacks. The security landscape fundamentally changes when you go from managing devices in a lab to managing them on a global scale. The threats multiply and the attack surface expands exponentially.
Security Challenges That Scale with You
When you’re building connected products for scale deployment, you’re solving for security across an evolving matrix of challenges:
Geographic Dispersion and Regulatory Complexity
Your devices aren’t just in one factory or one region anymore. They’re operating under GDPR in Europe, CCPA in California, and a patchwork of other regulations globally. When you’re managing devices across continents, a single security vulnerability can cascade into regulatory nightmares in multiple jurisdictions simultaneously.
An Expanding Attack Surface
The math should concern every connected product builder: if each device represents a potential entry point for attackers, going from 100 to 10,000 devices multiplies the risk exponentially. Each device-to-device connection, each device-to-cloud pathway, each firmware version in the field represents a potential vulnerability.
Operational Continuity at Scale
At scale, you can’t just “patch and reboot” when you discover a security vulnerability. You’re dealing with devices in remote locations where physical access is expensive or impossible. You need security measures that protect without disrupting operations and update mechanisms that work across thousands of devices without creating new vulnerabilities in the process.
The Threats You’re Defending Against
Let’s walk you through the threat landscape that all large device fleets face. Understanding these threats is the first step to building resilience against them:
Device Tampering in Distributed Environments
When devices are deployed in controlled factory environments, physical access controls can be implemented. But when you’re deploying equipment in remote locations, customer facilities, or public spaces, you can’t assume physical security. An attacker with physical access could extract credentials, alter sensor readings, or compromise the device to serve as a beachhead for broader network attacks.
Man-in-the-Middle Attacks on Cellular Networks
One reason many manufacturers prefer cellular connectivity is that it’s inherently more secure than WiFi and off the public internet. But “more secure” doesn’t mean “completely secure.” Sophisticated attackers can still intercept communications on cellular networks, potentially stealing credentials, injecting false data, or manipulating device behavior.
Denial of Service That Cripples Operations
Imagine your fleet of connected industrial equipment suddenly going silent, not because of a connectivity or power problem, but because attackers have deliberately overwhelmed your devices or network infrastructure. For a company with thousands of devices in production environments, a successful DoS attack means production downtime, missed SLAs, and potentially dangerous operational conditions.
Building Security That Scales: The Blues Approach
Now, let’s shift from problems to solutions. At Blues, we’ve architected our platform specifically to address security challenges. Here’s how we think about it:
Security Starts with Your Hardware
Our approach starts at the hardware level with Notecard’s secure element, a dedicated cryptographic processor that stores encryption keys and manages secure communications. These keys are “burned in” during manufacturing and never leave the device, meaning you’re not passing keys over networks, storing them in firmware, or relying on software-only security measures that can be compromised.
This matters at scale because every device in your fleet has the same cryptographic foundation. You’re not dealing with weak credentials or default passwords that attackers can exploit.
Layered Encryption Architecture
We provide multiple layers of encryption that you can enable based on your security and regulation requirements:
- VPN-level encryption is enabled by default and provides a secure, private channel between Notecard and Notehub operating off the public internet.
- TLS-level encryption for customers who need additional transport security from device to cloud.
- Event-level encryption for customers with the most stringent requirements, where data payloads are encrypted on the device and stay that way until decrypted once data arrive in your cloud. At this level, your data is never in plain text in transit or at rest.
Device Management and Secure Over-the-Air Updates
Here’s where our architecture really shines for hyperscale deployments. We enable secure firmware updates without requiring devices to implement complex bootloaders or update mechanisms themselves. Notecard can facilitate updates to host firmware through our Outboard DFU (Device Firmware Update) capability.
The security benefit? Even if a device gets compromised, bricked, or corrupted firmware is loaded, you can recover it remotely without physical access. At a scale where sending technicians to remote locations is expensive or impossible, this is the difference between a manageable incident and an operational catastrophe.
No Keys in Firmware
Here’s a security practice that many developers miss: storing third-party API keys or credentials in firmware is one of the easiest ways to compromise your entire fleet. Our proxy architecture solves this problem. If your application needs to call an external API, you can configure that a in Notehub and store the API key there. Your device firmware makes a call through Notehub, which calls the service on your behalf and returns the result to the device. API keys never live in device firmware where they could be extracted and exploited.
Looking Ahead: The Security Challenges We’re Solving Next
As I talk with customers scaling to tens of thousands of devices, their needs are shaping our roadmap:
Fleet-Level Security Visibility
At scale, customers need better visibility into the state and security of their entire fleet. Which devices are running which firmware versions? Are there devices behaving anomalously? How do you identify and isolate potentially compromised devices before they affect others?
We’re building features that will give customers fleet-level visibility and controls to monitor device health, identify outliers, and take action at scale.
Graduated Rollout and Rollback
Staged rollout capabilities are crucial for hyperscale security. You need to be able to deploy updates to a subset of your fleet, monitor their behavior, and either continue the rollout or roll back if issues emerge. This is table stakes for managing security updates across thousands of devices without risking your entire operation.
SOC 2 and Regulatory Compliance
For enterprises operating at scale, SOC 2 compliance and readiness for emerging regulations like the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) are critical when deploying across multiple markets and industries. We’re prioritizing SOC 2 certification and CRA readiness on our roadmap to ensure that when you build on Blues, you’re building on a platform that meets the compliance requirements you need and your customers demand.
What This Means for Your Scale Deployment
What does this mean for real deployments? If you’re building connected products for large-scale deployment, here’s how Blues’ security architecture translates to operational benefits:
Regulatory Compliance Across Regions
With our layered encryption, secure architecture, and commitment to meeting new regulations, you can meet stringent regulatory requirements without building custom security infrastructure for each region. Security is built into the platform, and you enable the level of protection your use case requires.
Reduced Attack Surface
By using cellular connectivity that operates off the public internet, combined with VPN-level encryption by default, you’ve immediately reduced your attack surface compared to WiFi or internet-connected devices. Add TLS and event-level encryption to create an in-depth defense that makes successful attacks exponentially harder.
Operational Resilience
Our secure over-the-air update capabilities allow you to respond quickly to vulnerabilities without sending teams into the field. And as we develop our staged rollout features, you’ll have even more control over how and when updates deploy across your fleet.
Simplified Security Management at Scale
Perhaps most importantly for hyperscalers, you’re not building and maintaining your own security infrastructure, managing certificate authorities, building VPN infrastructure, or writing custom bootloaders. You’re leveraging a platform built specifically for IoT device security at scale.
The Bottom Line for Hyperscalers
Here’s what I want you to take away from this: security at scale isn’t just “security, but bigger.” It’s fundamentally different, and the complexity—regulatory, operational, and financial—compounds.
But here’s the good news: if you build on the right foundation, security at scale is achievable. At Blues, we’ve architected our platform for companies scaling connected products to tens of thousands of devices across continents. We’ve thought through the security challenges of deployment, operation, update, and long-term fleet management.
If you’re at that inflection point where your successful pilot is becoming a large-scale deployment, where you’re looking at thousands of devices across multiple countries, where the security approach that got you here won’t get you there, let’s talk, because security at hyperscale is too important to figure out as you go.