Whenever the term “smart” comes up in a conversation, the idea of smart devices quickly steps up in our mind. The term smart was not very much in the know of users until the year 2000. With the advent of Smartphones, we started getting into the smart era. The immense revolution in the technological field has pushed us into the time where we are surrounded by everything smart. In today’s date, users have devise to control and carry out every single task of their life.
Smart and connected devices idea for home ultimately lead to the idea of Internet of things. Smart devices connected to each other through protocols like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, NFC and others can do a great job without having a person on job. These smart devices or connected devices are controlled through either a piece of software on-board or a piece of software controlled by the Internet through another device or a control panel.
Internet of things has made the lives easier. Network connectivity between devices makes it whole lot easier for any user to make the devices remotely exchange their data, or make the device do anything being away from i. While connected devices are making the world a better place, at the same time they are receiving continuous innovation. The advantage list can be stretched as long as you want to stretch it, but the risks of Internet of Things cannot be neglected either.
The risks of smart devices can be taken into account with the help of an example of a smart door. Let’s say, your house has all the doors smart. Some software controls these doors, and to lock or unlock the door, your phone has an application, which either has the Wi-Fi or NFC connectivity with the door. You’re going somewhere outside and you have locked the door. After a while, you come back home and try to unlock the door, but something has gone wrong with the software of the door; let’s call it a bug. Now your phone is unable to unlock it, what are you going to do? You are locked out because of a software error.
Now this kind of bugs can make an environment vulnerable. At places where security and privacy are the utmost priority of the organization, such security risks are simple not affordable. The integration of physical world into computer solutions is definitely cutting of the hard work that once was a matter of manpower, but at the same time is increasing the security risks as well.
It is about time that the Internet of things gets implemented in the entire cities. The concept of smart cities has just started rising. In the aforementioned scenario, a single bug or a single line of code can result in a huge disaster. The stock markets can collapse and many other groundbreaking happenings can occur.
Internet of Things theories are playing a huge role in the field of medical at the moment. Diagnosing diseases, curing them and applying appropriate medication is becoming easy with the help of IoT, but in the field of Medical IoT has its own kind of risks as well. There have been many incidents reported in the past few years which were somehow a result of the use of smart devices. Let us shed some light on one such incident.
In August 2015, a bug in the firmware of an IV fluid pump allowed hijacking; it simply put the lives of patients on risk. TrapX, a famous name in the cyber security brought out a white paper that pointed towards the healthcare organizations of the United States being vulnerable. Now you definitely do not want to risk your life as you simply cannot trust a computer in this case.
Internet of Things still needs a lot of focus on security research. Better firewalls are yet to be put up for the connected and smart devices. Developers are bound to perform various tests, they need to keep the firmware in a long test cycles to provide foolproof solutions. Smart and connected devices must receive continuous upgrades to make sure that all the occurring bugs wipe off before they become a disaster. IoT will rely on over 50 billion objects by the year 2020.
