Secure Device Onboarding & Fleet Trust

Provision device identity, rotate keys, attest posture, and monitor trust drift at scale.

Core Principles

Unique identity

Every device gets a cryptographic identity bound to posture signals.

Short-lived keys

Rotate and revoke keys automatically to reduce long-term exposure.

Continuous verification

Detect drift and enforce policy when device behavior changes.

Enrollment Options

Single device onboarding: copy a generated install command and run it on the target device.
Fleet onboarding: deploy a scanner/seed node, discover devices, and auto-enroll them in bulk.
Factory / OEM: pre-provision identity during manufacturing and activate at first boot (optional).

Air-gapped environments

QuantLayer can run entirely on-prem. For restricted networks, host the agent binaries and trust services locally and use approved transfer mechanisms.

Fleet Trust Lifecycle

Provision: create identity, assign to a fleet, and label by site/line/cell.
Attest: validate posture (agent health, secure boot signals, config baseline).
Operate: continuous monitoring for drift, suspicious binaries, and policy violations.
Recover: quarantine or isolate device; re-key and re-attest after remediation.
Retire: revoke credentials and remove from fleet inventory.

Example Onboarding Workflow

Below is an illustrative flow showing how a device enrolls, confirms identity, and begins reporting posture (adapt to your actual installer and API names).

# (1) Install QuantLayer agent
# Windows (PowerShell as Admin)
Invoke-WebRequest "https://<local-repo-or-cloud>/ql-agent.ps1" -OutFile "ql-agent.ps1"; \
  powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\ql-agent.ps1 -token "<enroll-token>";

# (2) Verify identity + posture
qlctl status
# Output (example)
# Device:  bdata-edge-731Y-XXZZO
# Identity: Verified
# Posture:  Healthy (SecureBoot=On, Agent=Running, KeyRotation=OK)

# (3) Start reporting and policy enforcement
qlctl enroll --fleet "Plant-01" --tags "edge,iot,conveyor"

Scaling Tips

Use consistent naming: Site-Line-Cell-Role (e.g., Plant01-Line2-CellA-Gateway01).
Group devices under servers/gateways in Network & Topology for operator-friendly views.
Apply policies by tags (site, environment, criticality) instead of one-off device rules.
Rotate keys on a schedule and on risk events (drift, suspicious process, privilege change).

Next Steps

Create a Fleet.
View Device Inventory.
Download PDF.

IoT best practice

Treat enrollment tokens as sensitive. Use short TTL tokens for field deployments and rotate them regularly.

Note

This is a design/reference docs page. Replace sample commands with your actual installer and CLI/API.