Internet of things (IoT) has become a common and a very essential part of home automation industry. The magical formula turns a dumb home into a smart home. IoT is a combination of smart sensors and systems that connect smart devices and appliances in your home to a network.
Once connected to a network, all appliances get the ability to communicate with each other and complete tasks without any user input.As they say there is nothing that has no disadvantages, the internet of things is no exception to it. You must have heard about so many benefits of IoT and now it is time you learn some of its security threats.
IoT and the security threats
IoT is undoubtedly a breakthrough in transforming human lives into blissful lives but it has its own challenges and issues. Security is one of the biggest issues that IoT needs to look into and carefully assess all over again. Internet of things is basically a hub wherein billions of devices are connected to one another, which is one reason that makes IoT a phenomenon that has some security issues. Such a huge network becomes an easy target for hackers.
The internet of things is growing, and by 2020, about 30 billion devices will be connected to the internet. Such massive connection will bring growing security concerns as well. Here are some components of the IoT that are most vulnerable to security threats:
Mobile Devices
Mobile devices that you use to connect to a number of smart devices in your home, and loaded with more and more apps can become a soft target for hackers. The more devices you connect, the easier it becomes for the hacker to attack devices at your home and derive all the important data that could work against you. The more the apps, the higher is the possibility to have security holes or malicious codes on your mobile device.
Cloud Computing
Dropbox, Google Drive, and more are some cloud computing solutions that offer us some very easy and efficient storage solutions. This is all what you probably knew as of now and you are totally ignorant that this convenience brings with it a fair share of security issues as well. With so much of data being stored on storage servers, great security risks arise, which demand that one updates and secures them all the time. This becomes a major risk for people who rely upon storage servers to upload confidential and important content.
How to protect yourself
The best way to guard yourself against the internet of things security threats is to know what all the threats are, and how they can actually affect you. The sooner you realize potent threats; you can do a lot to save yourself from them. Your door lock or the thermostat that know what time you leave home and what time you come back is an information that can be of great help for the hackers.
The best solution that can prevent this situation is to create an “intranet” and set your router that prevents every device from communicating with the outside world. Your devices will only have internal communication, as in they will only communicate with your LAN.
This solution does somewhat restricts the wide area of the internet of things but it is of immense help to keep your home far out of hacker’s reach. It closes almost every door that could be a soft target for the hackers, breaking into your home.
Internet of things has great benefits but it does have some security concerns as well. This does not mean you should stop enjoying the great benefits of IoT but all you need to do is to be more cautious in order to fight back and win over hackers.
