5 Common IoT Application Security Issues

The IoT market will reach $520 billion by the end of 2021, sourced by Bain & company. The popularity of connected devices and the IoT network led to an increased demand for its implementation into various sectors, from smart homes and small businesses to large enterprises, logistics, manufacturing, and healthcare. IoT application have benefitted different sectors with solutions such as real-time tracking, data gathering, analytics, and esurveillance. It helped with an increase in operational efficiency, safety and security, customer experience, and smart automation. The integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning has boosted the potential of IoT in many ways. Network led to an increased demand for its implementation into various sectors, from smart homes and small businesses to large enterprises, logistics

IoT Application security issues

In this booming network of IoT ecosystem, security issues and data privacy are a huge challenge. The lack of industry standards or protocols applied to the security architecture of IoT devices often leads to data breach and loss. There are several reasons that prevent manufacturers to build high standards of security into IoT devices and architecture.

• Ensuring robust security of the network requires regular testing and upgrading of software embedded in the device. And to provide the required support to the products regularly itself becomes a challenge for vendors as all the devices are not capable of over-the-air firmware upgrade.
• Resource constraints can be counted as another issue in the case of encryptions. Some products lack computing resources to support encryption. Also due to limited storage of devices, they are often dependent on cloud storage that itself is vulnerable to many security issues.

Common security challenges in IoT

1. Device authorization and authentication

With multiple points of entries in an IoT system, authorization becomes a critical factor. To develop identities of devices to allow secure access to gateways and other iot application is important. A lot of devices have to suffer data security breaches due to weak authorization system. A two-factor authentication model within IoT systems can resolve such issues along with device authorization solutions that ensure which devices can get access to the system.

2. Software updates

To update the firmware running on devices and gateways is a challenging part too. To know the updates that are required and to apply them securely to the devices that are communicating with different networks is important. For some legacy devices, it is often that updates are not available and are not supported by the manufacturers anymore. They should be tracked and retired immediately.

3. Data privacy

To ensure that the data is stored and processed securely after the transmission through different networks is critical for privacy issues. Applying data privacy into IoT systems include editing and filtering out sensitive data to separate it from identifiable data. Systems with machine learning are in demand where the data is securely stored on the cloud. It ensures robust privacy of data as an algorithm comes to the data, unlike traditional methods where data goes to the algorithm.

4. The limited capacity of devices

Several IoT devices have limited capabilities of processing, storage and memory. These devices are not capable of supporting security approaches like encryption and other complex processing functions to transfer data securely from one platform to the other in real-time. It makes such devices more vulnerable to security attacks.

5. The vulnerability of IoT devices

Connected IoT devices make it a complex system where it becomes challenging to analyze the outcomes of the vulnerability that the devices are exposed to, and manage the impact. The main challenge is to identify the devices that are affected within time, the services that were accessed and the areas that were impacted, so that actions are taken to resolve the issue, preventing further impact.

Conclusion

Adopting a multi-layer security approach for IoT systems and devices is essential to ensure easy transmission and security of critical data. It helps manage devices, services, and apps easily. Neglecting security in IoT devices can cause huge damage such as data breach, loss of data, and system failure. Implementation of security features within the system that works as a default through the entire lifecycle of the system maintains the integrity and enhances secure functioning.