Consistency is Key for IoT Security

A version of the below excerpted article originally appeared in SecurityWeek

From Wi-Fi enabled televisions to smart toasters, the Internet of Things is transformational to the digital age. As exciting as it might be to discover that your toast is finished via cellphone notification, this influx of technology poses a new layer of risk to organizations. The projected number of connected devices is expected to reach 20 billion by 2020, meaning that even a small number of infected devices can yield big security risks.

So, how can organizations protect their networks from IoT vulnerabilities? According to Scott Simkin’s recent article in SecurityWeek, the answer is consistency. Scott explains that consistency in identification, prevention and policy enforcement should be applied similarly to IoT, as it is to network, cloud and endpoint security. To successfully maintain consistency, he says organizations must have these three things:

• Complete visibility across multiple locations and network domains in the IoT value chain – You cannot prevent threats you cannot see. Organizations must apply the same full visibility into applications, content and users to create informed policy control for their IoT devices, as they would for their network.
• Natively Integrated Security Functions –Integrated security functions that work together, sharing consistent information to reduce your IoT threat footprint.
• High levels of automation across these functions and locations in order to rapidly identify advanced attacks and ensure that new security enforcement mechanisms can be deployed in near-real time. – Highly automated security prevents not only known threats, but also arms organizations with real-time traffic flow analysis to make unknown threats known.

A consistent approach to security can help your organization detect and stop advanced cyber threats.

Read the rest of Scott Simkin’s article at SecurityWeek.