The dominance of Internet of Things (IoT) is felt everywhere. From the smart home devices to smart connected workplaces to the latest avatar of smart cities and smart connected cars, Internet if Things and connected reality literally encompassed all areas of life. The connected devices are going to be commonplace in every area of living and for years to come it will continue to be a driving force in our life. IOT solutions are going to add value to life in numerous ways. Well, this is undoubtedly a great thing for our life, but like anything superb it has its flaws as well. Internet of Things offers a lot of security concerns that we need to take seriously.
Multitude of people connecting with each other all over the globe make data security a big challenge since most of the connected devices and their interfaces do not have a solid security protocol and arrangement. It is said that IOT devices most often are deployed without any arrangements for the data security. While sharing valuable data across devices became a rule with connected environment prevailing. addressing concerns to ensure data security became an important aspect. It is time, instead of being just enthusiastic about the possibilities of connected environment, we need to consider security concerns more seriously than ever before.
- Recent Instances Of Security Vulnerabilities: Recently detected Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks that suddenly made it impossible for the DNS provider, Dyn to access services such as Twitter, Amazon and Netflix has been taken as a serious warning to deal with the issue. Just consider the security flaws experienced by first generation World Wide Web and how over the years it learnt to deal with them. Any security threat and vulnerability will only amount to consumer distrust and lack of reliability. The recent instances of security flaws and vulnerabilities concerning IOT implementation only makes us aware of the huge cost we are supposed to bear in future if they are not addressed right away. Protective measures for the connected environment will not only reduce chances of misuse and breaches of security, but it will also help boosting the efficiency of the systems.
- Default Usernames And Passwords – A Great Source Of Threat: In analysing the various sources of threats we can easily find a few aspects. Until now a vast majority of the IoT devices that faced security threats had used mostly default usernames and passwords. Most surprisingly manufacturers of these devices did not ask the users to change them. Thanks to these default usernames and passwords being used across devices hackers now are equipped to infiltrate and break through the basic security layers of these devices. Thanks to this vulnerability hackers now can easily upload malicious code in a device software and can further attack a website.
The depth of the issue is really alarming since in most cases the possessors of these IOT devices remain mostly in darkness of these attacks. The owners of connected devices remain mostly unaware because these devices just continue to function as normally as always in spite of such attacks. This makes such security threats doubly dangerous for the IOT ecosystem and devices. Time for IOT development companies to take care of such serious issues!