Speaking at ISSE Conference 2016 in Paris today Harm Jan Arendshorst, IoT specialist at Verizon, explored the ethical and societal issues surrounding the evolving landscape of the Internet of Things (IoT), citing some of the key challenges the security industry is facing as a result.
“We’ve seen a shift in trends in terms of security and privacy," he said. "When we were in the enterprise space we were more concerned about protecting the boundaries of our enterprise. Now we are in the open era, with different threat vectors, and we need to respond to that. When we connect more and more things in our daily lives and in critical business, security and privacy become really key.”
Perhaps the biggest challenge of the IoT, added Arendshorst, is a fragmentation in standards relating to its security.
“Every week (almost) you see new standards, initiatives, groups of associations, big clients that want to push a certain type of platform, but it’s not really helping us. Across industries you need to harmonize those initiatives.”
Along with this, there are also a raft of other challenges which continue to hamper the safe implementation of the IoT, which include:
• Security breaches
• Physical safety
• Insurance
• Costs
• Brand & reputation
• Customer privacy
• Industry and partner security demands
However, the security industry has an opportunity to tackle these challenges, and Arendshorst highlighted the following as significant steps to getting the IoT to where we need it to be:
• Trust Frameworks
• Security Standards
• Security and Privacy Legislation
• Security Certification