Dependability demands and state of the art in the internet of things

The number of devices connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) has steadily been increasing over the last years and so has the variety of applications. There is no sign for this trend to weaken. A broad subset of them imposes requirements on attributes, such as availability, reliability, safety and many more. These attributes are commonly subsumed under the term dependability. In this paper we first give a brief introduction to dependability. Three application scenarios typical for the IoT are presented and their demands for each dependability attribute are discussed. Furthermore, an overview of the current state of the art is presented. Last, a summary of required technologies and future research topics to enable dependability in the IoT is given.