Securing Networks In the Internet of Things Era 106
An anonymous reader writes "Gartner reckons that the number of connected devices will hit 26 billion by 2020, almost 30 times the number of devices connected to the IoT in 2009. This estimate doesn't even include connected PCs, tablets and smartphones. The IoT will represent the biggest change to our relationship with the Internet since its inception. Many IoT devices themselves suffer from security limitations as a result of their minimal computing capabilities. For instance, the majority don't support sufficiently robust mechanisms for authentication, leaving network admins with only weak alternatives or sometimes no alternatives at all. As a result, it can be difficult for organizations to provide secure network access for certain IoT devices."
Re:will NOT have learned from Target (Score:2, Informative)
The entire premise of the article as given by the headline "Securing Networks in the Internet of Things Era" is bogus. The hard shell soft core (aka boundary security) strategy isn't applicable to the internet of things, because the things are necessarily going to be on a "network" that an attacker can access: It's all wireless. If you can't get to them through the gateway, you can always talk to them directly over the air. You can't protect the things by protecting the network. (With more and more ways for hostile systems to access "internal" networks directly, network border security is increasingly becoming a useless strategy in general computing as well. Reflection attacks, where compromised internal hosts are used as stepping stones to get to the entire network, have been eating away at border gateway security for a long time anyway.)
Re:Avoid IoT at all costs (Score:2, Informative)
Then you won't be feeding the ad and data mining engines. Devices will be designed not to work if they can't send your data back to their home base.
Think I'm kidding? [ideerapp.com]
That's just the beginning. Wait and watch. You'll see. There's nothing you can do to prevent it, because people who don't think about things will ensure this model succeeds in the marketplace.