Compare the number of computers you have at home with the number of IoT devices you will use today.... (think about your smartphone, your connected watch, scale, camera, speaker, home automation system…) and then compare those numbers to three years ago...
It is clear that we interact daily with more and more connected devices. This trend is visible not only in retail but also sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, education, traffic, smart cities and - of course – overall in the industry.
Every piece of information collected sees his value increased when inter-connected to others. More and more, we let IoT devices collect and process sensitive data, not to say personal ones.
This new Eldorado attracts hackers motivated by the revenues coming from theft, extorsion, espionage, hacktivists and competitors who see potential in disruption, but also governments looking for tactical or political advantages.
Where traditional IT has reached a certain level of maturity (user awareness, well-known reliable actors, automatic patching…), the rapid growth of IoT and Industrial IoT shows more and more examples of improper implementation of security.
Imagine for instance an (I)IoT device booting on code that has been tampered by a hacker. In this case, any protections deployed at higher layers would become obsolete to protect the device.