The Internet of Things offers all sorts of tempting conveniences, but these conveniences can also bring new security threats into the home, office and even your automobile. Some of these threats, like a malicious hacker taking control of a car’s acceleration or remotely turning on an oven to set a house on fire, are technically possible yet so easily managed with security failsafes that they are more likely to be seen in a movie than in real life. The IoT can create a real threat to privacy and data security, however, and examples of this are already being seen.
The major threat thus far has been to cloud-based services that manage devices. The most prominent example is the VTech hack of late 2015, in which the personal data of roughly five million people (including personal pictures of minors) was exposed to unknown intruders who were able to breach the company’s security.
Database hacks aren’t something that’s exclusive to the IoT, of course. But the new wrinkle here is that devices connected to a provider’s cloud-based system will be implicitly trusting that system to do things like update software, apply patches and execute remote commands. When those cloud servers are compromised, that means all the devices in homes, offices and vehicles that are linked to them are potentially compromised as well!
There’s also added vulnerability at the local level. While a hacker is very unlikely to be able to use your toaster to set your house on fire, that toaster (along with every other gadget connected to your WiFi network) represents a potential point of vulnerability. Your computer may be well-secured with the latest software patches, but what about the toaster? Or the washing machine? Or the refrigerator? Every device connected to the network can potentially be used to get access to every other device on the network if it is compromised.
None of this should drive anyone away from using the Internet of Things when it is beneficial to them, but it is important to both keep these security concerns in mind and to screen new devices carefully for potential vulnerability. Ultimately, consumers who choose to partake of these “smart devices” will need to demand that manufacturers have taken proper security measures, and to vote with their dollars when manufacturers take shortcuts that can potentially leave their data and local networks exposed.
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