Is The IoT Safe To Use?

New and bigger threats, plus economic and power considerations, require changes at every level.

by Ernest Worthman & Ed Sperling - Semiconductor Engineering, May. 11, 2015 – 

Data security has been a problem since well before the invention the computer, and it has been getting progressively more difficult to contain every year for the past eight decades. It was made much worse when computing was decentralized with the introduction of the IBM PC in 1981, made worse again when networking was introduced into corporations by Novell?s NetWare and Lotus Notes in the early 1990s, and made worse yet again as smart phones and USB drives became ubiquitous over the past decade.

The rollout of the Internet of Things/Internet of Everything is the next big dislocation, and it is forcing everyone to rethink the basic concept of security -- particularly when devices are connected to other devices that aren?t known to chip or device manufacturers. Pervasive, always-on connectivity, raises many issues that now require a complete rethinking of how to secure data because it no longer is even tied to one device.

"One of the big paradigms around security is that the attacker gets to choose where and when they want to attack," said Asaf Shen, vice president of products at Sansa Security. "The defender, on the other hand, has the task of trying to defend everything, everywhere, constantly. That is an old world doctrine that, interestingly, applies to new-world cyber security, as well. The attackers know that so they are always searching for the weakest link."

There certainly are plenty of weak links, from supply chain counterfeiting to chip and software security holes to user gullibility. Even devices that are secure frequently are connected to ones that are not."

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