Companies, countries, cities and institutions around the globe are just beginning to understand the opportunities that are being created by the internet of things (IoT) today, and will be created by the internet of everything (IoE) in the future.
When people, processes, data and things are brought together seamlessly through intelligent, networked connections, institutions are transformed. They can offer new customer and citizen experiences, improved operational efficiency, breakthrough innovations and entirely new economic models for services and growth.
But with these opportunities comes increased vulnerability, as organisations come under increasingly relentless attacks and security breaches become an everyday occurrence. Being able to prevent 100 per cent of breaches or detect all threats trying to infiltrate networks is simply not a reality today. A global community of attackers is creating advanced malware and launching it through multiple vectors into organisations of all sizes.
These increasingly costly attacks place customer data, corporate secrets and intellectual property at risk. Smaller organisations that form part of the supply chain are targeted not only for their own assets but also as entry points for attacks against the larger organisations they partner with.
To secure network connections, an end-to-end security approach is required that is as pervasive as the IoE. Physical and cybersecurity solutions need to come together intelligently and protect the networks, devices, applications and data that make up the IoE.
We believe the most effective way to address these real-world challenges is through continuous threat protection that is permeating and integrated. This goes beyond traditional point-in-time detection and taps into context-rich threat intelligence, dynamic malware analysis and retrospective security to allow breach detection, response and remediation across the entire attack continuum.
Organisations today need to maintain a secure end-to-end environment with cybersecurity solutions that protect not just networks and devices but also critical infrastructure, applications, data and intellectual property. Identity-based user and device authentication is vital to securing information across mobile and cloud deployments. At present, operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) often do not work in tandem, creating gaps and vulnerabilities. As infrastructure evolves with IoE, secure IT and OT systems will need to offer greater protection, quicker action, as well as richer context for intelligence-based decisions.
As adoption of IoT/IoE strategies continues to evolve, maintaining a proper security posture will require relevant practitioners to rethink how resources on the network can be separated and improper or malicious communications between resources are limited or disallowed. This is imperative for ensuring that highly secure access is consistently maintained, proper policies are applied to protect valuable business data and intellectual property, lateral spread of malware is limited, and reconnaissance is inhibited.
Threats from the internet of things and how to guard against them
There are several opportunities being created by the internet of things (IoT), but with these opportunities comes increased vulnerability