By Shelby Hiter – Internet-connected devices are growing exponentially, along with the number of users and use cases for those devices. But as these new IoT solutions develop at such a quick rate, who is taking responsibility for protecting users and their devices from cyber threats?

Gabriel Aguiar Noury, robotics product manager at Canonical, publisher of the Ubuntu operating system, believes that as more people gain access to IoT devices and the attack surface grows, IoT companies themselves will need to take responsibility for cybersecurity efforts upfront.

“The IoT market is in a defining stage,” Noury said. “People have adopted more and more IoT devices and connected them to the internet. However, they’ve also downloaded apps onto their phones to control these devices, without even reading the terms and conditions. They’ve also been providing passwords and more sensitive data without understanding where they will be stored and how they will be protected. And even more importantly, they’re using devices without checking if they are getting security updates. 

“The Morris worm was the first computer worm that gained significant mainstream media attention after it infested millions of computers and paralyzed the internet for several days. It was because of this scandal that the U.S. took cybersecurity risks seriously. And now, just like in 1988, people are not thinking enough about security risks, so it is up to the IoT companies themselves to take control of the situation. 

“In 2022, we predict that more and more governments will start demanding that IoT manufacturers declare how long IoT devices will keep receiving security maintenance to their customers up-front. The U.K. is one of the first countries that started working on such regulations, conscious of the interconnected risk that IoT devices bring.” 

Ben Goodman, SVP of global business and corporate development at ForgeRock, an access management and identity cloud provider, thinks it’s important that we start thinking of Internet of Things devices as citizens and hold them accountable for the same security and authorization requirements as humans. Read On: