Comeau Computing Tech Magazine 2024
In recent years, the growth of IoT devices that are being released is enormous. Even though they are coming with incredible benefits in a lot of ways that we even can not imagine, these devices are introduced to a variety of security challenges and risks.
We can not neglect the fact that the connected internet of things, which stands for IoT devices has transformed completely how enterprises collect, exchange, analyze and manage a huge amount of data. Those data are providing businesses an insight into everything including how to improve their business efficiency and productivity, reduce operational costs, understand consumer behavior, and enhance the overall work in a safe manner.
While the number of connected devices is constantly rising, it is more and more challenging for a business to secure them and keep all potential threats away. Unfortunately, IoT devices are attractive targets for cybercriminals when we are talking about any type of business. Whether the company is just starting out its business with IoT adoption or the company is looking for a way how to expand its established IoT networks, all are facing similar challenges when it comes to managing, monitoring, and of course, securing their connected devices. In this article, we listed some things that all businesses should consider if they want to successfully secure IoT devices.
1. What every company should know about IT security?
Security Management is a highly important practice for all businesses. Therefore, all companies should be open to getting familiar with the security software providers that limbtec.com can enable them.
Managing the complex IoT lifecycle is a new challenge for all possible companies and because of that, they should be accepting new revolutionary approaches that will provide them with an enhanced level of security and protection. In that way, they will not have reason to worry about any type of potential cyberattacks.
2. You Should Operate Device Discovery for Total Visibility
First of all, all businesses should focus on getting their visibility into the exact number of IoT devices that they have connected to the network. The goal is to discover which types of devices are exactly connected to your own network and after that, the company should keep a detailed and up-to-date checklist of all connected IoT devices.
Additionally, it would be great to have a dedicated IoT security solution that will ensure that all the included devices are identified. The company’s job refers to collecting the manufacturer and model ID, the serial number, firmware versions of both hardware and software, and monitoring data on underlying operating systems and the devices configurations. It is also crucial to detect the risk profile of every possible device that the company is having as well as the device’s behavior while comparing it to other connected devices to the network. These profiles will assist with next-generation firewall policy creation.
3. It is Crucial to Apply Network Segmentation for Stronger Defense
In general, for those who do not know this, the main security goal regarding network segmentation is referring to reducing the attack surface. What network segmentation does is divide a network into two or even more subsections with the purpose of enabling control over the lateral movement of device traffic. When the network is unsegmented, a large number of endpoints are communicating directly with each other without any partitioning in place which can lead to the outcome where a single compromise event can spread laterally and become a contagion.
So, in short, the more segments one network is having, the harder it is going to be for hackers to jeopardize a device. All companies should use a virtual local area network, which stands shortly for VLAN. This type of configuration and net-generation firewall policies that will implement network segments will keep IoT devices separate from IT assets. In that way, we can say that protection will be at the highest level from the potential possibility of a lateral exploit. Lastly, it is worth mentioning that better integration between the IoT security solution and the next-generation firewall will definitely add IoT context to the firewall’s next-generation capabilities and at the same time reduce both efforts and spent time in the process of policy creation.
4. Do not forget to Adopt Secure Password Practices
Unfortunately, many people are not familiar with the fact that poor password security can lead to the outcome of being hacked. That is why it is important, especially for businesses, that they put a huge effort into security password practice. By doing this their passwords will not leak which means that IoT devices in their companies would not be jeopardized. So, maintain strong password security if you want to secure your IoT devices. Maybe you do not know this, but most IoT devices already come with a weak preset password that hackers can easily find online.
Therefore, from the moment a new IoT device is connected to your company’s network, it would be best to reset its preset password with a complex one that will guarantee security. Remember that the new password that you are going to put in needs to be very difficult to guess, which means that it must be highly unique. That applies to all possible devices that are connected together.
5. It is important to Continue to Update the Firmware
Even though most IT systems are generally able to patch all security flaws with their regular updates, you should know that many IoT devices are not created to have this ability. This means that their security flaws will stay there which is very risky in the terms of security and protection. Therefore, when you get a new IoT device, the first thing that you want to do when you start setting it up is to visit the vendor’s platform and start downloading some new security patches for known vulnerabilities.
Once you ensure that your devices are regularly patched with the latest updates, you can be peaceful. Additionally, you can work with all of your IoT device vendors with the purpose of establishing a recurrent patch management and firmware upgrade tactic. If you want to avoid losing your data, we suggest you add dedicated IoT-aware files and web threat prevention including virtual patching capabilities with intrusion prevention.
