Podcast: Securing The Internet of Things

One of the most vexing problems created by the fast-evolving Internet of Things is how to secure the massive trove of data that is transmitted and then stored by smart devices such as automobiles, consumer and household electronics and personal devices.

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Companies making products for the Internet of Things, including wearable technology, need to consider application security and malicious actors, says Stacy Cannady of Cisco and The Trusted Computing Group. (Photo courtesy of Arduino.cc)

As we’ve seen, private sector firms have been aggressive in leveraging new technology to connect their products to the Internet. But less thought has been given to the security and privacy implications of doing so. Now people are starting to take notice. In recent weeks,  the FTC settled a case with a California firm, TRENDNet over balky home surveillance cameras they sold – cameras that were discovered to be easily discoverable and hackable from the public Internet.

But, with so many cooks in the IoT kitchen (so to speak), where does responsibility for securing technology lie? Recently, I chatted with an expert on security and the Internet of Things. Stacy Cannady of Cisco Systems is a Technical Marketing Engineer in the Trust Computing Group. Last week, he headed up a panel at the Trusted Computing Conference in Orlando Florida. The panel, The Wild, Wild Worldwide Web looked at ways to secure the growing IoT. Before he took the stage, I had a chance to chat with Stacy about some of the challenges facing companies and consumers as the global population of Internet connected devices skyrockets. Cannady said that more attention needs to be given to provable security grounded in a hardware based root of trust (like the Trusted Platform Module). He also said that software and hardware designers need to be cognizant of the various ways their creations may be used and abused to give hostile actors access to critical infrastructure.

Check out our interview, in Podcast form, by clicking one of the links below!

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