Paving the Way for IoT Security

As the number of applications for the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine to machine (M2M) sectors quickly escalates, the communications industry is faced with an increasing number of emerging and complex security concerns surrounding these technologies.

In the fall of 2016, IoT DDoS malware attacks had a massive impact on the industry, and two of the major attacks were DoS attacks on hosted DNS provider DYN in October and on Deutsche Telekom in November, according to the 2017 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR).

Heavy Reading Senior Analyst Steve Bell and Aeris CTO Syed Zaeem "Z" Hosain delivered a webinar in March entitled "IoT Security - Be Battle Ready," and discussed key risk points, best practices for intrusion detection and response, and security measures for IoT/M2M data and applications. (See IoT Security - Be Battle Ready.)

In a survey of 75 of the webinar attendees, nearly 39% said devices are a priority area for IoT security; 20% said "data in motion" is a priority area, and 21% are concerned with the network/enterprise edge. When asked, "How secure are your IoT operations today?," 47% of 74 respondents said "moderately secure" and only 7% rated it as "highly secure."

By 2020, Gartner predicts 20.4 billion connected devices will be in use worldwide. As this market grows, service providers and manufacturers will need to continually strengthen security measures in response to new threats.

The infographic below includes an overview of IoT security data from the Heavy Reading/Aeris webinar, and provides insight into the current state of IoT security as well as top priority areas in strengthening security measures.