2018 IT news

This is yet another stunning example of how the IoT can create unconventional breaches.

The only way to protect your environment is to identify all connected devices. How can you expect to manage your environment if you don’t even know how many devices there are? Finding all those devices is no simple task; it’s estimated there are already over 8.4 billion connected devices!

Managing IoT Devices

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Most Companies Are Unprepared for the IoT

Researchers at Ben-Gurion University warn that hackers have an unexpected resource in exploiting your environment: a Google search. IoT device manufactures set a default password for their devices, sometimes even sharing passwords between brands.

“It only took 30 minutes to find passwords for most of the devices [used in the testing] and some of them were found merely through a Google search of the brand,” said Omer Shwartz, a Ph.D. student and researcher at Ben-Gurion.

Thanks to a survey by ForeScout and CensusWide, we also have an eye-opening view into how unprepared companies are for the Internet of Things.

500 CIOs and IT managers provided data and here are the take aways:

• Approximately 15% do no keep security patches up to date.
• 47% don’t change the default passwords on devices.
• Up to 46% said they did not have a full view of the devices connected to their networks.

This is startling. Nearly half of the businesses involved in the survey couldn’t even begin managing their IoT devices. With no way to see which devices are connected to their network, they wouldn’t be able to patch or manage vulnerable devices.

Myles Bray, vice president of EMEA at ForeScout, stated: “IoT has expanded the attack surface considerably for all firms, and without basic security hygiene it is easy for bad actors to gain a foothold and then move laterally on a network to reach high-value assets and cause business disruption.”

When asked about the results of the survey Natan Bandler, CEO and Co-Founder of Cy-OT, added “What is needed is a dedicated cybersecurity solution that is monitoring both the IoT device and its activity…By doing this, an organization will be able to detect when and which devices are at risk.”

IoT Device Management

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What do the numbers tell us?

As far back as 2006, there were already 2 billion devices within the Internet of things. By 2016, that number had grown to 6.38 billion.

Now it’s estimated that there are currently over 8.4 billion devices, with that number expected to grow to 11.19 billion by the end of 2018. According to Gartner, by 2020 the number of IoT devices will explode to over 20 billion.

Juniper Research estimates that by 2022 businesses will spend $134 billion annually on cybersecurity for just IoT devices.

How much does a cyberattack cost business?

Looking at a common attack vector, a DDoS attack, The Ponemon Institute estimates that a company will lose approximately $1.7 million. The major expense is in the form of lost services, $517,599. Other costs come in at $414,128 for technical support, $229,071 for lost productivity, $346,062 for disruption of normal operations, and $199,201 for damage/theft of IT assets.

It’s also estimated that businesses are hit with an average of eight DDoS attacks a day, all thanks to the exponentially increasing number of unsecured IoT devices.

So what’s so difficult about IoT device management?

“It’s hard to evaluate the security of a camera, or a doorbell, or something you put in an industrial machine.” 

– Michael Kaiser, the executive director of the National Cybersecurity Alliance