According to Gartner, more than 65% of companies wanted to adopt IoT solutions five years ago. At that time, the total number of connected devices around the world was expected to exceed the 20 billion mark. This shows that IoTization has dominated the way organizations operate. This is because it brings convenience and productivity benefits to individuals and businesses. However, they all fade in comparison with the security threats the IoT sector poses. This article sheds light on how major security concerns like breaches of confidential information and preventing loss of control over connected things, have developed the requirement of IoT-specific penetrating testing services.
Introduction
Who Should Be Held Responsible For IoT Security?
A conventional IoT solution is a mechanism of connected components that can be gathered into three categories:
- Things (actuators, sensors, and smart devices)
- IoT field entries.
- The cloud ( client-server apps, machine learning, data analytics, big data warehouse, streaming data processor, and cloud entries).
Now the following questions arise:
- Whose responsibility is it to manage the security of each component?
- Is it important for companies entailing IoT systems to implement their pen testing?
- Or are they already sufficiently protected?
Let’s get started!
Things
The safety of smart things that are equipped with actuators and sensors should be guaranteed by the device developers. These organizations must mention and follow security needs, apply security best practices, and implement security testing. Device manufacturers have good experience in mechanical and electrical engineering and public safety. However, they have no experience in software security and you understand them. If an organization wants to make safe smart devices, it needs to hire resources (security experts) and conduct security training sessions for its team. In the majority of the cases, the company’s budget doesn’t allow such expenditures. Moreover, smart device security doesn’t stop after developing and selling of the device. A device developer needs to maintain it via regular firmware updates. This also incurs extra cost.
IoT field gateways
IoT field gateways have become a very popular target of hackers because of the following reasons:
- All of the gateways have high processing power. As a result, there are more vulnerabilities to exploit.
- These are edge gadgets between the cloud part and things. It serves as the penetration point for intruders.
Developers of IoT field gateway gadgets should provide secure communication encryption and transmission channels for IoT data. Therefore, the company must schedule a penetrating test at least once a year. In this way, you will be confident that all communications between the devices and gateways are safe.
The cloud
A private cloud owner has all the responsibility for the safety of the IoT cloud. That is all for its important parts: client-server user apps, control apps machine learning, data analytics, big data warehouse, streaming data processor, and cloud gateway.
Don’t hesitate to apply an in-depth pen test, if your company is a private cloud owner, entailing DDoS testing. In this situation, if your company is a public cloud customer, both you and your cloud provider have mutual responsibility for IoT cloud security.
The cloud service market is extremely competitive. Cloud service providers aim to maintain an extremely strong security posture and implement cloud penetration testing themselves. However, you can never guarantee that such an assessment was comprehensive enough to cover the maximum vulnerabilities and cover the most important targets:
- Cloud gateway (it is a boundary element between the cloud and the internet).
- Streaming data processor ( it facilitates all data flows and is also placed near the boundary).
- Data analytics (it can be visited via the web).
- User applications ( as they encounter the internet)
Therefore, IoT cloud customers employ third-party pen testing companies to assess if their cloud providers pay this attention to security aspects.
Selecting The Suitable IoT Penetration Testing Companies
Your company as an IoT customer must protect the security of the complete IoT ecosystem. One of the techniques to address this challenge is to hire a penetration testing company, that can identify the security vulnerabilities in various IoT components.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is meant by IoT?
A network of physically connected objects, including cars, appliances, and other items, that are implanted with sensors, software, and network connectivity is known as the Internet of Things (IoT). Because of this, they are able to gather and exchange data, which facilitates automation and increased productivity across a range of applications.
What is pen testing?
Pen testing, also known as penetration testing, is a technique used to assess a computer system’s security by simulating a cyberattack. Finding weaknesses that an attacker could exploit is the main goal of this exercise.
