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Trending / October 15, 2017

Why We Need to Think Differently about IoT Security

Breach fatigue is a real issue today. As individual consumers and IT professionals, we risk getting de-sensitized to breach alerts and notifications given just how widespread they have become. While this is a real issue, we cannot simply let our guard down or accept the current state – especially as I believe the volume and scale of today’s breaches and their associated risks will perhaps pale in comparison to what’s to come in the internet of things (IoT) world.

It is one thing to deal with loss of information, data and privacy, as has been happening in the world of digital data. As serious as that is, the IoT world is the world of connected “things” that we rely on daily – the brakes in your car, the IV pumps alongside each hospital bed, the furnace in your home, the water filtration system that supplies water to your community – but also take for granted simply because they work without us having to worry about them. We rarely stop to think about what would happen if … and yet, with everything coming online, the real question is not if, but when. Therein lies the big challenge ahead of us.

Again, breaches and cyberattacks in the digital world are attacks on data and information. By contrast, cyberattacks in the IoT world are attacks on flesh, blood and steel – attacks that can be life-threatening. For example, ransomware that locks out access to your data takes on a whole different risk and urgency level when it is threatening to pollute your water filtration system. Compounding this is the fact that we live in a world where everything is now becoming connected, perhaps even to the point of getting ludicrous. From connected forks to connected diapers, everything is now coming online. This poses a serious challenge and an extremely difficult problem in terms of containing the cyberrisk. The reasons are the following:

  1. The manufacturers of these connected “things” in many cases are not thinking about the security of these connected things and often lack the expertise to do this well. In fact, in many cases, the components and modules used for connectivity are simply leveraged from other industries, thereby propagating the risk carried by those components from one industry to another. Worse still, manufacturers may not be willing to bear the cost of adding in security since the focus of many of these “connected things” is on their functionality, not on the ability to securely connect them.
  2. Consumers of those very products are not asking or willing in many cases to pay for the additional security. Worse still, they do not know how to evaluate the security posture of these connected things or what questions to ask. This is another big problem not just at the individual consumer level, but also at the enterprise level. As an example, in the healthcare space, when making purchasing decisions on drug infusion pumps, hospitals tend to make the decision on functionality, price and certain regulatory requirements. Rarely does the information security (InfoSec) team get involved to evaluate their security posture. It is a completely different buying trajectory. In the past, when these products did not have a communication interface, that may have been fine. However, today with almost all equipment in hospitals – and in many other industries – getting a communications interface, this creates major security challenges.
  3. Software developers for connected devices come from diverse backgrounds and geographies. There is little standardization or consensus on incorporating secure coding practices into the heart of any software development, engineering course or module across the globe. In fact, any coursework on security tends to be a separate module that, in many cases, is optional in many courses and curriculums. Consequently, many developers globally today have no notion of how to build secure applications. The result is a continual proliferation of software that has been written with little to no regard to its exploitability and is seeping into the world of connected things.

These are all significant and vexing challenges with neither simple fixes nor a common understanding or agreement on the problem space itself. I won’t claim to have a solution to all of them either, but in a subsequent blog, I will outline some thoughts on how one could begin to start approaching this. In the meanwhile, I think the risk and rhetoric around cyber breaches associated with the world of connected things could perhaps take on an entirely new dimension.

To learn more now about how a Security Delivery Platform can optimize your security posture, download the complete Security Inside Out e-book. Stay safe.


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