The research essay focuses on Internet of Things security. Internet of things can manage huge number of devices that are interconnected in the network and provides the capability to communicate and manage devices remotely through the internet. The application of Internet of things is extending from operating rooms of hospitals to residential basements. The transfer of IT networks from closed networks to enterprise networks to public internet is taking place at a fast rate and therefore creating alarming IoT security issues (Farooq, Waseem, Khairi & Mazhar, 2015). Today people are increasingly being dependent upon intelligent and interconnected devices in all aspects of life. Therefore, initiative should be taken in securing these devices and complying them with regulatory requirements as they perform important functions that are related with the life of people. Breaches in IoT security is becoming an alarming issue and dominating news headlines lately (Mahmoud, Yousuf, Aloul, & Zualkernan, 2015). As a result, government of every nation should make huge investment on IoT security technologies. The following paragraphs will enlighten on the security challenges that are faced by Internet of Things connected devices and suggest ways to address the security issues.
Internet of Things promises to provide better safety and management to areas where the technology is widely used. Additionally, it improves efficiency of energy along with optimizing manufacturing processes. Despite of these benefits, security breaches leads to customer dissatisfaction, violation of privacy and monetary losses (Tankard, 2015). The IoT security breaches might happen due to attacks from internet bugs, eavesdropping, denial-of-service attacks and ransom ware attacks. Therefore, there is an increasing demand for securing this technology.
IoT security is the area of internet of things that is concerned with safeguarding network and devices connected to the network. Connected devices are known as ‘things’ in the context of internet of things that are uniquely identified by identifiers in the network. They have ability to automatically transfer data in the network. Machine-to-machine communication in industries that uses embedded sensors systems and computing devices have increased IoT communication (Abomhara & Køien, 2015). Additionally, IoT communication prevails in vehicle-to-vehicle communication, smart energy grids, building and home automation as well as in wearable computing devices.
The concept of integrating devices and other objects into a network is new and as a result, security has not been considered in product design. The IoT devices that are sold sometimes consists of unpatched and old embedded software and systems (Riahi, Natalizio, Challal, Mitton & Iera, 2014). Changing the default passwords of smart devices becomes difficult for the purchasers. Even if they change, they fail to select strong passwords. Therefore, to increase security, segmentation of an IoT device into its own network is needed and the network should have restricted access. The network can then be monitored for detecting unusual traffic and necessary actions can be taken.
Various organisation have adopted this emerging technology and facing security issues. Hackers are exploiting these security issues and stealing personal information of users through various means. According to recent news, they even targeted smart refrigerator to exploit user data. Security experts have also revealed that IoT security issues arises with individual using same login passwords for multiple websites. They use the same ID and password for their IoT devices, which can be easily hacked (Hossain, Fotouhi, & Hasan, 2015). If the hackers get information about an individual’s google account then it is quite possible that he will get all bank information of the individual. This will lead to monetary loss. Another news revealed that hackers are using a particular software bug to hijack smart cars remotely. With the software, they are able to control steering, brakes and even transmission of the cars. Therefore, the emerging technology should pass through various rules and regulations to ensure security and privacy of sensitive data as well as IoT devices.
Security experts are continuously warning about the huge number of connected devices through internet that are prone to malicious attacks since the birth of IoT concept in late 1990s. A researcher in Proofpoint that is an enterprise security firm first discovered IoT botnet in December 2013. He said that baby monitors, smart TVs and household appliances made up 25 percent of the botnet. Security experts fear for security disaster if security issues are not solved soon (Riahi, Challal, Natalizio, Chtourou & Bouabdallah, 2013). Hackers are finding it easy to hack routers instead of computers. Experts even feel that computers in modems and routers are much more powerful that the computers of 1990s. To understand the security issues of IoT, first embedded system market should be understood. The chip manufacturer makes the chip as cheap as possible while keeping profit margin slim. Less engineering knowledge is involved without giving much priority to security (Xu, Wendt, & Potkonjak, 2014). A Linux operating system is put onto the chip and sold in the market. Original device manufacturers (ODM) purchases the chip based on price, features like bandwidth, and gives the outlook of embedded device along with its brand name. They also give less priority to security. The problem is with software that has been programmed in the chip. Software provided is old even when the device is new. As a result, these devices become more vulnerable to security attacks. The situation is made worse as old software components cannot be upgraded to latest versions. It resulted in millions of insecure and unpatched devices sitting in the internet for about five to ten years (Dorri, Kanhere, Jurdak & Gauravaram, 2017). Some of the common malwares that attack IoT devices are Malware DNS Changer that attacks computers, home routers, and Linux worms that targets cameras, routers and other embedded systems connected to the internet through Internet of Things.
Service providers of platforms and devices are increasingly being concerned about sensitive data that flows through IoT devices in the network. One way to control data flow through these devices to ensure security is application-programming interface (API) (Chase, 2013). Despite of the security issues, IoT application have several positive sides that needs to be considered. To ensure privacy controls API management systems should be enforced (Gubbi, Buyya, Marusic & Palaniswami, 2013). The functions that API management system provides are:
Devices within IoT aggregate and collect fragments of data from where privacy risks arises. The manufacturers of IoT devices should give more priority to IoT device security as the physical world is increasingly being integrated with technology. The application of IoT is reaching from industrial control to home appliances and devices such as transport and power control. More the expansion of application more complex becomes the technology and severe the consequences. Therefore, security of the devices connected through internet should be given more priority as the devices handles sensitive user data and information. The protocol that should be used and being forced to web engineers is IPv6. The protocol offers limitless IP addresses however will take time to be implemented practically.
Evolution of technology in future will combine all smart devices, big data analytics and cloud that will change lives of people. Internet of Things is referred as a gateway between physical and digital world. The examples of IoT are smart vehicles, thermostats, smart meters, health and activity monitors and so on. The devices interact with individual using ZigBee, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Z-wave (Wurm, Hoang, Arias, Sadeghi & Jin, 2016). Internet of Things has the ability to collect information from various systems and devices that provides great convenience and insights. Despite of all positive effects of IoT, when it comes to security history is repeating itself. The number of device connected to the internet is growing day by day and therefore threats of possible attacks are increasing (Andrea, Chrysostomou & Hadjichristofi, 2015). Internet of Things is still in its emerging phase and therefore security and privacy can be ensured. Privacy and security can be ensured by following few steps:
From the above discussions, it can be concluded that security of Internet of Things is necessary to keep sensitive user data confidential. Organisations using this emerging technology should ensure that they are purchasing in-built secured IoT devices. Hackers are finding it easy to hack routers rather than PC. Today people are increasingly being dependent upon intelligent and interconnected devices in all aspects of life. Initiative should be taken in securing these devices and complying them with regulatory requirements as they perform important functions that are related with the life of people. The application of IoT is reaching from industrial control to home appliances and devices. More the expansion of application more complex becomes the technology and severe the consequences. Therefore, security of the devices connected through internet should be given more priority as the devices handles sensitive user data and information. Application programming interface can be used as a solution to IoT security issues. The implementer, developer or manufacturer, securer as well as consumer all are responsible for securing IoT devices. It is the responsibility of implementer to use in-built secured IoT devices. Developer should ensure security checks while manufacturing the devices. Securer and consumer should also ensure privacy and security policies in IoT devices. The number of IoT devices is increasing day by day and therefore it is the responsibility of the user to ensure security in internet-connected devices.
References:
Abomhara, M., & Køien, G. M. (2015). Cyber security and the internet of things: vulnerabilities, threats, intruders and attacks. Journal of Cyber Security, 4(1), 65-88.
Andrea, I., Chrysostomou, C., & Hadjichristofi, G. (2015, July). Internet of Things: Security vulnerabilities and challenges. In Computers and Communication (ISCC), 2015 IEEE Symposium on (pp. 180-187). IEEE.
Chase, J. (2013). The evolution of the internet of things. Texas Instruments, 1.
Chen, S., Xu, H., Liu, D., Hu, B., & Wang, H. (2014). A vision of IoT: Applications, challenges, and opportunities with china perspective. IEEE Internet of Things journal, 1(4), 349-359.
Dorri, A., Kanhere, S. S., Jurdak, R., & Gauravaram, P. (2017, March). Blockchain for IoT security and privacy: The case study of a smart home. In Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops (PerCom Workshops), 2017 IEEE International Conference on (pp. 618-623). IEEE.
Farooq, M. U., Waseem, M., Khairi, A., & Mazhar, S. (2015). A critical analysis on the security concerns of internet of things (IoT). International Journal of Computer Applications, 111(7).
Gubbi, J., Buyya, R., Marusic, S., & Palaniswami, M. (2013). Internet of Things (IoT): A vision, architectural elements, and future directions. Future generation computer systems, 29(7), 1645-1660.
Hossain, M. M., Fotouhi, M., & Hasan, R. (2015, June). Towards an analysis of security issues, challenges, and open problems in the internet of things. In Services (SERVICES), 2015 IEEE World Congress on (pp. 21-28). IEEE.
Mahmoud, R., Yousuf, T., Aloul, F., & Zualkernan, I. (2015, December). Internet of things (IoT) security: Current status, challenges and prospective measures. In Internet Technology and Secured Transactions (ICITST), 2015 10th International Conference for (pp. 336-341). IEEE.
Riahi, A., Challal, Y., Natalizio, E., Chtourou, Z., & Bouabdallah, A. (2013, May). A systemic approach for IoT security. In Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems (DCOSS), 2013 IEEE International Conference on (pp. 351-355). IEEE.
Riahi, A., Natalizio, E., Challal, Y., Mitton, N., & Iera, A. (2014, February). A systemic and cognitive approach for IoT security. In Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC), 2014 International Conference on (pp. 183-188). IEEE.
Tankard, C. (2015). The security issues of the Internet of Things. Computer Fraud & Security, 2015(9), 11-14.
Wurm, J., Hoang, K., Arias, O., Sadeghi, A. R., & Jin, Y. (2016, January). Security analysis on consumer and industrial iot devices. In Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC), 2016 21st Asia and South Pacific (pp. 519-524). IEEE.
Xu, T., Wendt, J. B., & Potkonjak, M. (2014, November). Security of IoT systems: Design challenges and opportunities. In Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (pp. 417-423). IEEE Press.
Essay Writing Service Features
Our Experience
No matter how complex your assignment is, we can find the right professional for your specific task. Contact Essay is an essay writing company that hires only the smartest minds to help you with your projects. Our expertise allows us to provide students with high-quality academic writing, editing & proofreading services.
Free Features
Free revision policy
$10Free bibliography & reference
$8Free title page
$8Free formatting
$8How Our Essay Writing Service Works
First, you will need to complete an order form. It's not difficult but, in case there is anything you find not to be clear, you may always call us so that we can guide you through it. On the order form, you will need to include some basic information concerning your order: subject, topic, number of pages, etc. We also encourage our clients to upload any relevant information or sources that will help.
Complete the order form
Once we have all the information and instructions that we need, we select the most suitable writer for your assignment. While everything seems to be clear, the writer, who has complete knowledge of the subject, may need clarification from you. It is at that point that you would receive a call or email from us.
Writer’s assignment
As soon as the writer has finished, it will be delivered both to the website and to your email address so that you will not miss it. If your deadline is close at hand, we will place a call to you to make sure that you receive the paper on time.
Completing the order and download