The age of the Internet of Things isn’t coming.
It’s here.
We’ve been hearing about the IoT since the term was first coined back in 1999, and now, over a decade and a half later, with ‘smart’ phones, refrigerators, TVs and connected cars in our pockets, homes and driveways, we’ve finally arrived, somewhat awkwardly, at the dawn of the IoT era.
The conventional wisdom holds that by connecting everything, we’ll see a huge increase in productivity. We can continue working at the office while remotely monitoring the house, easily letting Sparky in and out of the kitchen by opening the dog door from the dentist’s office, or by checking the car’s tire pressure before we leave work, or warming up the oven for dinner on the drive home.
While this all sounds great in theory, at Comodo, we’re seeing a fair amount of risk associated with connecting formerly ‘dumb’ machines, appliances and systems to the Internet, with all of the web’s risks and breaches and attempts by malicious actors to steal personal information.
Security is typically the last line of defense to be baked into any technological innovation, and this has proven to be the case with the Internet of Things, too. While manufacturers enthusiastically built in IoT connectivity to our DVRs, washing machines and thermostats, they haven’t been so eager to invest the time and money needed to insure the safety and security of those devices, often relying on outdated (read: cheaper) chips and technology to ‘smarten up’ their newly connected devices.
One of the reasons is that if you’re making dishwashers, ovens and refrigerators, your primary concern hasn’t been protecting those appliances from being hacked. You’re an appliance manufacturer, not a cybersecurity provider, and how exactly do you go about building in robust defenses to devices that have no display or keyboard to interact with,especially if that’s not your main area of expertise? If cost is an issue, as it almost always is,or if you’re building essentially a throw-away item using more primitive chip technology, or if battery power is at a premium, where is the incentive to build in defenses? Furthermore, with any number of different manufacturers getting into the smart machine and appliance space, how much cooperation can we expect regarding adoption of common platforms, languages and protocols?
The security technology exists to safeguard these devices (it certainly exists at Comodo) but it isn’t currently housed where it’s needed: with the firms actually manufacturing these ‘smart’ devices making the needed investments and upgrades to their product lines. And malicious actors haven’t been shy in exploiting these loopholes and weak defenses to hack into personal fitness devices, police department surveillance camera feeds and connected toys, cars and gaming systems.
While Comodo and other cybersecurity experts are concerned about the security of the IoT, there still isn’t a strong consensus on how best to solve the problem. We know what needs to be done – we’re working on a framework that can be adopted by IoT manufacturers to secure the devices that’ll be in our living rooms, as well on our wrists and roadways – but until there’s consensus from the manufacturers or new regulations to adhere to, the IoT era is starting off looking and feeling more than a little bit like the Wild West.
