Understanding the Role of Connected Devices in Recent Cyberattacks

The world is increasingly connected. Smartphones are now capable of locking and unlocking our front doors, turning on lights, checking the camera for packages left on the doorstep. We are able to measure our steps, check our baby monitors, record our favorite programs from wherever we have connectivity. We will soon be able to commute to our offices in driverless cars, trains, buses, have our child's blood sugar checked remotely, and divert important energy resources from town to town efficiently. These are incredible potentially life-saving benefits that our society is learning to embrace, but we are also learning that these innovations do not come without a cost. In 2016, the internet encountered a denial of service attack on a scale never before seen. This attack effectively blocked access to popular sites like Netflix and Twitter by weaponizing unsecured network connected devices like cameras and DVRs. How do we make ourselves more secure without sacrificing the benefits of innovation and technological advances? A knee-jerk reaction might be to regulate the Internet of Things, but the United States cannot regulate the world. Standards applied to American-designed, American-manufactured, American-sold devices won't necessarily capture the millions of devices purchased by the billions of people around the world, so the vulnerabilities might remain. Any sustainable and effective solution will require input from all members of the ecosystem of the so-called Internet of Things.