Читать книгу Tech Trends in Practice - Бернард Марр, Bernard Marr - Страница 32

Privacy is one concern with IoT devices – how much of our activity and behavior do we really want monitored, especially in our own homes? Many people appear happy to forgo their privacy in return for a smarter, more efficient home, yet advances like smart dust – where devices are so small they’re hard to detect – may make this a bigger concern going forward. For this reason, companies looking to embed IoT technology in their products, workplaces, and equipment should absolutely take privacy, ethics, and transparency seriously.

Security is another major concern. For one thing, the connectivity of IoT devices has created a dangerous side effect known as botnets. The term refers to a group of internet-connected devices controlled by a central system, and is usually related to DDoS attacks – where a hacker uses a large group of devices to flood a website with fake requests, bringing the website down. A famous example of this is the 2016 DDoS attack that took a major internet provider partially offline, causing many high-profile websites like Twitter and Amazon to disappear from the internet for a while. In that attack, an estimated 100,000 unsecured IoT devices were harnessed to create the botnet.⁷

The problem is many of these devices that connect to the internet have little or no built-in security – and even when they do, users often neglect to take basic security precautions, like setting a password. This makes the problem of botnets much worse – and also opens up devices to data theft. In other words, your smart devices could potentially leak your data, and offer easy access points to anyone looking to steal it.

Particularly for organizations – but really, for anyone with an IoT device – it’s vital to take the necessary steps to secure your devices and data. As well as protecting devices with passwords, this may include:

 Routinely ensuring devices are up to date with the latest version of software. New weaknesses are constantly being found, and patches are released regularly to fix security gaps. Hitting the “update later” option could leave your system vulnerable to attack.

 Auditing devices on a regular basis. Companies increasingly allow employees to connect their own devices to company networks (what’s known as “bring your own device”), but this can create security headaches. Keep a record of every device that has access to your network, including company devices, and ensure all devices are up to date with the latest operating system.

 Segmenting networks so that different parts of the network that don’t need to talk to each other are kept isolated from each other. Similarly, if something doesn’t need to be connected to your network, then don’t connect it.

 Keeping an eye out for botnets. Analyzing your network traffic is the best way to spot this. If you notice your devices are habitually connecting or sending data to destinations you don’t recognize, they may need updating or be taken offline.

Blockchain (Trend 6) may play an increasing role in IoT security. According to one report, the use of blockchain technology to secure IoT devices and data doubled during 2018.⁸ The powerful encryption used to secure blockchains makes it very hard for attackers to penetrate even one part of the chain.