Cyber-attackers are increasingly turning their attention to the IoT and enterprises need to take note. As security attacks on IoT devices and apps ramp up, enterprise business and technology leaders aren’t responding adequately. Gartner predicts that more than 25% of identified attacks in enterprises will involve IoT by 2020, and they may realize lots of success as IoT is forecasted to account for only 10% or less of IT security budgets.
Security solutions and services have always been excellent opportunities for solution providers. As more enterprises embrace a digital business and the IoT, they will need support for securing and managing their devices, data, apps and connections, which are all possible points of attack. And that’s a powerful opportunity to sell solutions as well as to develop a recurring revenue stream. Here’s a look at the vulnerabilities that hackers like to prey on.
Understanding the Problems
Manufacturers design IoT devices to be functional and cheap, not necessarily secure, and they often can’t be secured by traditional endpoint security and access control solutions. In some cases, an IoT sensor may be embedded in a washing machine, drill or tractor. IoT devices, things and objects typically have minimal processing power and memory so they may not be able to run agent-based software or be scanned remotely. That puts them beyond the reach of traditional endpoint security and network access control (NAC) solutions that enforce access policies and authenticate the network.