Complexity is the major challenge that stands in the way of wide-scale adoption of internet of things devices in the home, Yuval Ben-Itzhak, CTO at AVG Technologies, told Infosecurity at Mobile World Congress 2015.
“As more and more people are moving to IoT services, one of the challenges we’re seeing for consumers is ‘How do I deal with all of that?’ Many users hardly manage to configure their WiFi properly – we see a lot of security issues with people just leaving it as it is. Now imagine that problem with the complexity of the IoT. It’s a big challenge. It may actually slow down the adoption of IoT in the home.”
AVG used Mobile World Congress to announce a round of new solutions in-keeping with its reputation as one of the most widely-used consumer security providers. Ben-Itzhak gave Infosecurity a preview of one of these, the new version of its Zen mobile security application.
The app takes a family focus, providing an all-in-one-place overview of a number of pieces of information provided by partner apps and wearables. These include phone controls and location services, for example to let parents keep track of their children.
Version two of AVG Zen will also offer information to users about core services from mobile operators, such as when they are nearing their data capacity.
Ben-Ihtzak said that this addresses a core security issue faced by many families: “How to provide the simplicity to the family to deal with a range of smartphones and tablets – and now more even more connected services”
He added that, “People are busy with their lives already. We are looking at the device, the data and the people. For people it’s not just about the device, it’s about, ‘Did you turn the alarm on at home? Has something happened with a credit card? Did I authorize that?’”
To help mitigate the problem of “overflowing notifications” that IoT brings, the aim for AVG now is to “take all the complexity out and deliver one single, meaningful notification. It could be on a wearable or phone, and it should give you the option to simply ‘fix it’.”