Minimum Viable Product Should Never Equal Minimum Viable Security
Starting a new design can be an exciting endeavor, especially when you have an exciting idea and/or challenging problem. The competitive landscape in the IoT can be fierce but great designs should never begin focused on budgets and cost-cutting, especially when it comes to security.
As the Internet of Things expands its connectivity, its reach will naturally extend into systems that affect public safety and human life. With this increased connectivity, privacy quickly becomes a major concern, as illustrated with the recent advent of the Shodan search engine.
Shodan, “the world’s first search engine for Internet-connected devices,” exposed that security was clearly not a priority of many webcam designs. The new search engine also revealed that to an extent, the security of “Internet of Things” is in a severely broken state. If you aren’t familiar with the Shodan search engine, here’s a quick and dirty rundown: Shodan crawls the Internet at random looking for IP addresses with open ports. If an open port lacks authentication and streams a video feed, its script takes a snap and moves on, providing an image feed to paid Shodan members. With manufacturers engaged in a race to the bottom in terms of lowering costs, security has been left by the wayside in favor of maximizing profits.
Being a leading technical distributor of wireless and video embedded components and solutions, Symmetry Electronics closely monitors the state of the IoT world to see how we can contribute to the ecosystem. While much of the development of good security within a design lies in the realm of software engineering, we encourage our partners and customers alike to take advantage of our technical expertise at the beginning of a design cycle. We offer a selection of over 750 different dev kits and eval boards to help engineers make the most of their development time and resources so focus can be put back into improving the state of IoT security, one design at a time. Contact us via email or at (877) 466-9722 for more information on getting started with a specific dev kit.