The Internet of Things

9IoT Security: Experience Is an Expensive Teacher

Paul Kearney¹

¹School of Computing and Digital Technology, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK

²EBTIC, Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

9.1 Introduction

Analysts agree that the Internet of Things (IoT) market is already significant and is set to grow year on year for the foreseeable future. To pick one estimate amongst many, Bain & Company predicts that the combined markets for IoT hardware, software, systems integration, and data and telecom services will grow to $520 billion in 2021, more than double the $235 billion spent in 2017 [1]. This is despite the perception that vendors have made little progress on lowering barriers to adoption, one of the most significant of which is the need for effective security. According to a survey of enterprise customers reported in the Bain paper, Security is the top barrier to adoption, with over 40% of respondents seeing it as amongst the top three barriers, with IT/OT integration coming in a distant second, with less than 30%.

Those who keep an eye on the technical (or even the popular) press will not be surprised about this, as vulnerabilities in, and breaches of, IoT products and applications are reported with depressing regularity. One of most frequently cited is the attack on the Domain Name Service (DNS) provider, Dyn, in 2016 using the so‐called Mirai botnet [2]. A botnet is a collection of innocent devices or software processes that have been infected with ...