Cyber Attacks against any type of digital assets have an adverse effect on the functioning of the physical world and threat level increases for the other connected devices. Incidents such as the VPN filter attack on the Ukrainian chlorine plant for water treatment or the vulnerabilities of police body cameras that can be accessed by criminals was a continuation of attack from other devices.
The current lack of security in IoT devices that have seen an exponential growth in their deployment has created vulnerability for other electronic devices. The IoT device manufacturers are looking towards security as an added feature to secure the device rather than an inherent part of the device.
For IoT devices, it’s important that product managers and development teams weigh-in on conflicting ideas for securing the hardware, software, firmware, mobile apps and cloud services associated with the IoT device. The critical design choices affect the security architecture of the device. In an ideal world, design choices are based on the security feedback loop, reducing flaws and real-world testing against threats. Unfortunately, most connected devices are manufactured without being tested for actual threats and as threats become intelligent the devices can be tampered with.
Threat analysis of each device can be difficult and automated analysis can help manufacturers by augmenting the process for already strained cybersecurity staff. The automated analysis holds static and dynamic tools that replicate real-life cyber threats to identify vulnerabilities of the devices to support product quality and security.
