‘Taking charge of the IoT’s security vulnerabilities’ – a #WhitePaper from @Canonical | #IoTuesday

If you took part in last year’s IoT security-centric survey from Canonical, the results are out and published in a free white paper download. With an OS designed for IoT devices (‘things devices’?) combined with last year’s prominent Mirai botnet and DDoS attacks that crippled parts of mainstream internet service for some time, the white paper is prescient and timely.

The white paper is a good read, a survey of 2,000 respondents that relies heavily on statistical data, sprinkled throughout with relevant past and forward-thinking quotes – and of course nods and plugs for the Ubuntu Core 16 project. I really only take issue with one point of the white paper, in the introduction, when it is states “attacks are only going to get worse…” You have to define what ‘bad’ is to metric something as worse. For instance would ‘more sites’ going down be ‘worse’ or would fewer ‘vital’ sites going down be ‘worse’ for economy, communications, etc.

Either way if you’re in IoT, security, sysadmin work or otherwise, you’ll probably want to give the white paper a read.

A recent Canonical survey of 2000 consumers suggests that a shockingly high percentage of connected devices may be vulnerable to botnets, hackers and cyberattacks:

  • Only 31% of consumers update the firmware on their connected devices as soon as updates become available
  • 40% of consumers have never performed firmware updates on their connected devices
  • 40% of consumers believe that performing firmware updates on their connected devices is the responsibility of either software developers or the device manufacturer

Canonical’s report examines closely the behaviours and attitudes of UK consumers to IoT security, looks at some of the leading IoT security issues in the industry, and asks how they might be addressed.

Read more.


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