By 2020, more than 25% of cyberattacks on enterprises will involve Internet of Things (IoT) devices, though IoT will account for less than 10% of IT security budgets, according to Gartner. While some in the industry have proposed using blockchain to enhance IoT security, a panel of experts at the LiveWorx 2018 conference disagreed that the distributed ledger technology would radically transform the way IoT devices operate.
Considering the destructive Mirai botnet, it’s possible that the world will reach that 25% figure sooner, Joshua Corman, chief security officer at PTC, said during the panel discussion. The number of devices that are unpatchable with hard coded credentials that exist naked on the internet provide a recipe for disaster, Corman said.
IoT devices’ diversity and lifespan make them strong targets for attack, according to Chris Lord, CTO and co-founder of security firm Armored Things. “When it comes to IoT devices, we have thousands of different operating systems and variants,” Lord said during the panel discussion. “That diversity creates all sorts of challenges—every one has different configurations and different ways to patch and manage.”
