Security in an ever more connected world

25.06.2020

We live in a world that is forever shrinking, and the more connected we become to the things in our environment, the more convenient our errands and everyday work become. Society is already accustomed to all sorts of objects having chips implanted in them like passports, bank cards, automobiles, musical equipment, and cell phones for purposes such as pinpointing their position, controlling them, collecting information from them, and more. The list of objects continues to grow in a world that is ever more digitalized. Even mirrors, tea kettles, and lamps are now controllable at a distance, so that people can save money on their electricity bills and have multicookers cook their dinners for them just by the time they walk through the door. This system of objects connected to a cloud is called the internet of things or IoT. With the Internet of things, not only can a car indicate to a driver what problems the car is having, it can prioritize what the highest-priority phenomena are, and display to the driver an ad by an oil changing station up ahead when the car is low on oil.

Cyber Security in IoT

The IoT is not without its critics, however. Many people have serious questions about how resilient IoT security will be in a world in which attackers can gain compromising information against individuals and businesses along with the potential server security threats in the event they should succeed in sabotaging them. Thus, companies have made an effort to come up with various means to remedy the vulnerability of internet of things security. Many smart devices weren’t built to provide high level security, nor do they have the ability to operate it. Some even arrive with malware already on them, whose wireless communication with the other devices infests the entire network, usually undetected. Some of the solutions have been protection, visibility, and segmentation. Devices are authenticated based on their risk level and are subjected to different policies related to their operations.

Secure Server Practices

Network attached storage, or NAS, has attempted to protect users from attackers by creating a personal cloud with information and equipment that is only accessible within that server cloud from devices with specific IP addresses. The downside of NAS, however, is that they can sometimes break down or fail. This is why it’s best to use two network attached storage units, one copying the other. Using complex passwords instead of weak default passwords is always good advice and it is ideal that each device uses its own encryption algorithm. When accessing these networks on the Internet, HTTPS is considered essential in providing for a secure web interface. Access can be configured to the web interface enabling the port to be set that the web interface must use. Yet another practice is the firmware update method. This entails data stored on ROM or a computer that provides operation instructions, which can only be altered via special programs that the firm designed.

Devices Cloud Risk assessment