Nobody Believes

The latest IoT attack, called Z-Wave, impacts over 100 MILLION devices.  Popular routers were also just discovered to have a wide-open avenue of attack.  While devices are getter smarter and IoT proliferates, the reality is that nobody believes that these devices are safe.

And they are not – and can never be – as long as they are static.

The issue is not that devices have a problem, rather the real challenge is that there is nothing in place to fix these devices when they inevitably need help.

Would you buy a car that could not be serviced?  And yet you are expected to purchase these devices and hope for the best?

Seriously?

Future Proofing Is Essential

Enterprises are fully-aware that devices break, cybersecurity professional will jump up and down about the constantly changing warfare in which they engage and consumers really only got comfortable with computers after Windows Update became commonplace.  Everybody knows that a product or device is going to be worthless if there are not maintenance services in place.

Yet nobody in the IoT world seems to have grasped this concept.

Instead, smart devices roll out continuously without a solid plan for managing these devices in the field.  While earlier versions of connected devices were static, most modern devices can be managed and adapted and can readily overcome issues.

But you need to implement this management upfront and it needs to be secure.  Ideally, any such system also needs to minimize, or completely eliminate, any impact to the target functionality of the protected, managed devices.

After all, people are not purchasing devices for secure management – that is an expectation.  An expectation that, in the unmanaged world of the IoT, will truly differentiate those who first start providing future-proofed options.