The Top 10 IoT Security Challenges

Not that IoT security challenges are going to be static, but this article by Anna Gerber from IBM lists the top 10 susceptible areas in an IoT solution as it stands today. Securing these susceptible areas poses a big challenge today to IoT developers and architects. As has been the case with securing your servers or PCs, keeping up with the security challenges and threats relevant at the time, the security challenges for an IoT solution will be much more daunting to handle if you don't cover your base with the key IoT security challenges highlighted below by Gerber:

1. Secure constrained devices
2. Authorize and authenticate devices
3. Manage device updates
4. Secure communication
5. Ensure data privacy and integrity
6. Secure web, mobile, and cloud applications
7. Ensure high availability
8. Detect vulnerabilities and incidents
9. Manage vulnerabilities
10. Predict and preempt security issues

The IoT security architecture and measures should address these areas at its foundation. Gerber goes on to give high-level details of each of these areas in the article. For example, some IoT devices are power constrained since they have relatively low processing power so while they’re trying to save energy running on batteries, it makes them not the ideal candidate for high-end encryption. This warrants various layers of protection mechanisms that should be incorporated. Another example is the ability to update the security measures in a device remotely, or taking the precaution of keeping the non-updatable devices in a different security network altogether.

One of the many interesting points mentioned in the article is about anonymizing the data being stored or transmitted to ensure data privacy. Now that is a whole new level of data privacy measure if it starts all the way from the edge devices! I for one would like to do it if I were to build an IoT security system. Would you? Please read the full article for more such interesting insights into IoT security challenges.