Measures to Overcome IoT Risks

Internet of Things (IoT) is a new age technology that is driving the modern day businesses and with the capabilities that it holds within itself, business efficiency got improvised. The connected devices hold a great value but also come with security risks that give rise to two way opinion on the use of technology. Some real-life risks are –

•  As there are many nodes in the network it increases the cyber attack surface.

•  Also, it is highly vulnerable to ransomware, where the person locks down the HVAC system, releases control only when paid through bitcoin.

•  Disrupted Services due to DDOS attack conducted by IoT botnets.

•  Currently, the IoT storage is centralized making it highly vulnerable to cyber attacks.

These threats are expected to accelerate with time as the IoT devices are spreading vastly in the industry and dependability on them is also increasing. Organizations need to take measures to overcome or at least minimize the risk; some of the measures could be –

•  Segmenting The Network: One of the methods could be to segment the networks, devices, and storage making it harder for attackers to reach the complete data. Even if a network faces security breach all the data is not at risk and the whole process does not go down. This also makes it easier for IT to detect the exact network that got disrupted.

•  Applying Security Profiles on IoT Devices: Unlike humans, IoT has constrained the number of hosts that they communicate with. Therefore, a whitelist filter could be applied which will deny all traffic unless it is specified to be with an authorized host improving the overall IoT security. Security regulations must be implemented to continuously monitor and restrict access activities.

•  Deep Analysis: Security threats can also be mitigated by analyzing the previous breaches. A proper analysis will allow predicting the network that gets attacked the most. An extra security layer can be then applied to such networks; also this would allow predicting networks that haven’t been attacked but have high chances.

Overcoming from the drawbacks of IoT makes it a great tool to enhance business efficiency and productivity. Every technology comes with pros and cons it depends on the organization to embrace which side of the coin keeping the other one in mind.