Internet of Things Archives

Internet of Things

Cisco: Internet of Things Tips Scales In Favor Of Bad Guys?

April 27, 2014 Paul Roberts

A week from this Wednesday, the Security Ledger is hosting The Security of Things Forum: a day-long event in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that will explore the challenges of securing a global network of hundreds of billions of Internet connected devices. [Register here for The Security of Things Forum – Security and Internet of Things: May 7, Cambridge, MA] One of the big issues that we’ll be tackling is how the Internet of Things (or IoT) changes the security paradigm for enterprises and other large, IT-dependent organizations. Needless to say: the corporate network environment of 2020 won’t bear much resemblance to the network of 2000. But what kinds of tools and technologies will be needed to secure that environment and identify threats to the data stored on it? What security tools and strategies will go the way of the typewriter? What areas will require more investment? So far, the focus of discussions about IoT […]

IoT And Big Data To Create Insurance Industry Winners, Losers

April 26, 2014 Paul Roberts

This blog writes a lot about risk and the Internet of Things. Specifically: we talk about how smart, sensor rich, connected devices create all kinds of new risks for enterprises and consumers. It goes without saying that feature development (and adoption) are running well ahead of pesky issues like secure design and deployment or data privacy. Smart companies are trying to put some brakes on that trend. (Witness Google prohibiting sensitive health data from its Android Wear platform.) But, by and large, companies are plowing ahead into IoT technologies without a lot of consideration of the risks. But there’s one industry where risk _is_ the business: the insurance industry. And there, the thinking about the potential of Internet of Things is decidedly bullish. In fact, a recent report from the financial services research firm Celent (paywall) suggests that broad adoption of IoT technologies will revolutionize the way insurance companies market and sell to […]

Heartbleed: Technology Monoculture’s Second Act

April 22, 2014 Paul Roberts

Say ‘technology monoculture’ and most people (who don’t look at you cross-eyed or say ‘God bless you!’) will say “Microsoft” or “Windows” or “Microsoft Windows.” That makes sense. Windows still runs on more than 90% of all desktop systems, long after Redmond’s star is rumored to have dimmed next to that of Apple. Microsoft is the poster child for the dangers and benefits of a monoculture. Hardware makers and application developers have a single platform to write to – consumers have confidence that the software and hardware they buy will “just work” so long as they’re running some version of Windows. The downside, of course, is that the Windows monoculture has also been a boon to bad guys, who can tailor exploits to one operating system or associated application (Office, Internet Explorer) and be confident that 9 of 10 systems their malicious software encounters will at least be running some version of the […]

IDS And The IoT: Snort Creator Marty Roesch On Securing The Internet of Things

April 13, 2014 Paul Roberts

Martin Roesch is one of the giants of the security industry: a hacker in the truest sense of the term who, in the late 1990s created a wide range of security tools as a way to teach himself about information security. One of them, the open source SNORT intrusion detection system, turned into one of the mostly widely used and respected security tools in the world. SNORT became the foundation for Sourcefire, the company Marty helped found in 2001. And Sourcefire went on to fantastic success: first as a startup, then as a publicly traded company and, as of October of last year, as part of Cisco Systems, after the networking giant bought Roesch’s company for $2.7 billion. These days, Marty serves as a Vice President and Chief Architect of Cisco’s Security Business Group, where he’s helping shape that company’s strategy for securing the next generation of enterprise (and post-enterprise) networks. […]

Web to Wheels: Tesla Password Insecurity Exposes Cars, Drivers

March 31, 2014 Paul Roberts

We’ve interviewed security researcher Nitesh Dhanjani before. In the last year, he’s done some eye-opening investigations into consumer products like the Philips HUE smart lightbulbs. We did a podcast with Nitesh in December where we talked more generally about security and the Internet of Things. Now Dhanjani is in the news again with research on one of the most high-profile connected devices in the world: Tesla’s super-smart electric cars. In a presentation at Black Hat Asia on Friday, he released findings of some research on the Tesla Model S that suggests the cars have a weakness common to many Web based applications: a weak authentication scheme. (A PDF version of the report is here.) Specifically: Tesla’s sophisticated cars rely on a decidedly unsophisticated security scheme: a six-character PIN. Dhanjani’s research discovered a variety of potentially exploitable holes that would give even an unsophisticated attacker a good chance at breaking into […]