Smart Devices Could be Putting Your Security at Risk
At Soteria Cloud we are often concerned with just how little concern our clients take in their digital security. While secure and encrypted online backups are one way to protect your personal data and information, there are other security risks at play. Let’s take the smart home for example. Smart homes are those that are controlled by means of connected smart devices. While our various “smart” devices add an invaluable amount of convenience to our lives, we must also consider the security risks that they pose too. Are manufacturers taking the relevant steps to ensure that smart devices such as baby monitors, mobile phones, kitchen gadgets and similar, don’t put your personal safety at risk?
The Internet of Things, which is a concept that supports a network of devices all able to connect to each other, has continued a steady trajectory from it’s early innovations and looks set to generate over $1,2 billion in 2016. Unfortunately, along with the convenience of connectivity across multiple devices comes the risk of personal and critical data being more easily accessed by unscrupulous parties.
What exactly does this mean?
Put simply, as more and more appliances, gadgets and devices are being manufactured with sensors and computers control our businesses, the risk of ensuing chaos from hackers is infinitely increased.
According to Gartner, a market forecaster, over 6 billion connected devices will be introduced to our lives and the world, during the course of 2016! Some of these connected devices were showcased at the January 2016 CES (Consumer Electronics Show) held in Las Vegas.
Industry professionals have indicated that all these connected devices could fall prey more easily to criminals. The more skilled the hacker, the more chaos they can cause with a variety of gadgets and devices. All it takes is a tech savvy individual to hack into your device settings, monitor them and figure out when you are on holiday and away from the property or business. This could lead to burglaries. Personal details can also be hacked via your smart device while it is connected to your computer – and we all know what that means: identity theft and fraud risks.
Where does the security risk really originate from?
In many instances, the manufacturer can be responsible for the lack of security. Some of the weaknesses in the security of these connected products lies in their “easy to set up” features, the use of default passwords (often ‘admin’) which many users neglect to change, and of course the fact that consumers can log into and access their devices and systems via insecure web portals.
How to Safeguard Your Home and Internet of Things – Some Tips from Industry Professionals
- Change your default password as soon as you get the device.
- Edit your system settings so that your devices and gadgets can only be accessed from your private or secure network.
At Soteria Cloud, as much as we support the emergence of The Internet of Things and simply love that smart homes are becoming a part of our current times, we do advise that you take a few extra steps to ensure that your home and personal data is kept safe and secure – you won’t regret it!