News & Comment: Trend Micro Survey Confirms A Disregard for the Risk of an IoT Breach

COMMENT:

In response to a new Trend Micro survey, which found among other things that only half of IT and security decision-makers believe IoT-related attacks are a threat to their organizations, and that 43% view IoT security as an afterthought, an expert with Corero Network Security offers commentary.

Sean Newman, Director Product Management, Corero Network Security

“Responses to the recent Trend Micro survey of IT and security decision makers shows a disappointing disregard for IoT security, combined with a certain level of naivety.  With the focus around data breach and the associated impact, there was no recognition of other key IoT device abuse, including DDoS and, increasingly, crypto-mining.  Even if DDoS does feel like it’s someone else’s problem, if it’s your IoT devices that are part of a botnet launching an attack, then their traffic is still clogging your network and there’s the chance that you will be identified as a source of the attack, with all the reputational damage and potential legal proceedings that brings.  

“And, when it comes to the rapidly increasing trend for abusing IoT devices, en masse, for crypto-mining, it has been shown that this is often done with complete disregard for the device itself, with the CPU being over-worked to the point it can easily result early-life failure of the device due to the overheating caused.  As security professionals, we work hard to educate on the latest threats but, it feels like there is still a way to go with respect to IoT, especially as the hackers continue to innovate at pace in this area.”