Is Your Security Architecture Ready for IoT and Edge Computing Challenges

IoT and edge computing are in demand across all sectors, be it home users, manufacturing companies, or ecommerce businesses.
And why not – it brings plenty of benefits, such as convenience, cost-effectiveness, operational efficiency, and more.

However, every coin has two sides. IoT and edge computing share data with multiple other systems and devices, which may or may not be secure. This brings cybersecurity challenges, including data loss, privacy, security, compliance issues, and so on.

While using IoT and edge is recommended, you must ensure to secure your IoT and edge computing systems to minimise cybersecurity risks.
This article explains the security challenges of IoT and edge computing and how you can tackle them.

What Is IoT?
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of physical devices or objects embedded with software, sensors, and other technologies. These interrelated objects (“things”) connect with other IoT devices and cloud systems over the network to exchange data.

The application of IoT devices is vast, from homes to businesses and industries, such as manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, transportation, and more. IoT devices could be:

• Home devices like smart TVs, smartwatches, thermostats, digital machines, appliances, vehicles, baby monitors, etc.
• Industrial equipment, such as controllers in factories, temperature monitors, shipment trackers, and so on.
  
  

IoT devices offer plenty of benefits - affordability due to low cost and power consumption by sensors, efficient data transfers, automation to reduce human intervention, an added convenience for users, and more.

This is why IoT spending is skyrocketing globally, reaching US$1.1 trillion by 2025. Smart home systems alone are projected to register US$123 billion.

What Is Edge Computing?

Edge computing is a technology that brings data storage and computing to the closest possible position to the data source. This means edge computing processes client data closer to the source where it’s originating, which reduces the distance between the server and the client. As a result, it optimises communications, bandwidth usage, and latency.

Unlike traditional computing with a centralised data centre where applications run and computation is performed at a long distance from the client, edge computing is distributed. Here, you run limited tasks in the cloud and move them to distributed, local places, such as IoT devices, smartphones, computers, etc.

Example: Your applications are placed closer to IoT devices or users where the data is originating from. This helps improve response time, consumes lower bandwidth, and delivers outputs faster.

Today, edge computing is used in various sectors:

• Self-driving cars
• Medical monitors
• Cybersecurity monitoring
• Video conferencing
  
  

According to Statista, the worldwide market size of edge computing stands tall at US$350 billion.

Although IoT and edge computing both offer many benefits to individuals and businesses alike, they come with certain drawbacks as well. They could increase privacy and security risks, add up complexity and cost, and more. Let’s discuss some cybersecurity challenges with IoT and Edge computing.

Increased Attack Surface
Modern organisations have multiple processes to run and use various IoT and edge devices to ease the process. For example, ecommerce businesses use location trackers to track their shipments.

The attack surface of an organisation increases as connected devices grow in number. This means more entry points and data-sharing between various systems, giving more opportunities for hackers to compromise your confidential business data.

Data Security
IoT connects millions of devices over the network and enables data exchange between them. However, not all IoT devices facilitate robust security measures.

So, if you introduce these devices to your network, these weak links increase the attack surface and act as easy entry points for attackers. Hackers can detect and exploit vulnerabilities in these devices to manipulate and compromise data and damage an organisation’s reputation and finances.

A big example of IoT attacks is the Stuxnet worm that targeted Iran’s nuclear plant in 2010 by compromising their logic controllers. This allowed attackers to access critical data, and damage uranium enrichment centrifuges, by reducing the facility’s efficiency.

Privacy and Compliance Risks
The more IoT and edge devices are connected to your network, the more data is exposed to the internet. These connected devices will have users’ personal data, such as names, phone numbers, email addresses, social security numbers, social media details, privacy and compliance.

If you don’t invest in cybersecurity for IoT and edge computing devices, you risk losing valuable data to attackers. This creates data privacy and compliance risks for organisations failing to secure their business and customer data. Regulatory bodies such as HIPAA, UK GDPR, PCI DSS, etc. have stringent laws for organisations, failure to which could cause heavy penalties. This way, you could lose money and customer trust, both.

For example, unpatched firmware and poor authentication mechanisms in a healthcare institution’s edge devices lure attackers big time. It could result in attackers stealing patients’ health records and putting the organisations under strict scrutiny by HIPAA authorities.

Risks During Transmission
IoT and edge devices transmit data with other systems. Even if you place edge devices closer to users, some part of the data still transmits over the network. If you don't encrypt your data or enable secure data transmission, attackers may intercept and steal your data. This is again disastrous for your organisation as it leads to privacy risks and may serve as the starting point for a full-blown attack.

Limited Visibility
With so many devices connected to the internet, it becomes difficult to view, track, and manage the security of each of these devices. This creates blind spots in security, making vulnerability detection and mitigation challenging. As a result, you may lag behind in your security efforts while attackers may exploit your devices.

No Standardisation
If you have set up no proper standards or protocols for IoT and edge device usage, you may face various complications in terms of device security and interoperability. In addition, IoT devices may come from different manufacturers with varying update cycles, vulnerabilities, patch management, and so on. This inconsistency impacts your risk mitigation efforts as you will have no common ground to get started.

If you want to make the most of your IoT and edge computing efforts, it’s necessary to tackle the challenges IoT and edge computing impose concerning cybersecurity. Here's how you can do it:

Security Architecture Reviews
First of all, you must know what IoT and edge devices are connected to your network. This visibility will help you detect security issues and help in securing connected devices.

For this, conduct a comprehensive IoT security architecture review to evaluate how effective your security controls are both at operational and technical levels. It assesses your people, processes, and technology (including IoT and edge devices), and offers actionable recommendations to tackle security challenges in IoT and improve your overall security posture. It includes evaluating the security of your:

• IT Infrastructure
• Applications
• Networks
• Identity and access management
• Cloud and data security
• Device configurations
  
  

IoT Security Best Practices

Follow IoT security best practices to ensure your edge and IoT devices along with the data they carry are safe and secure.

Encryption: Use end-to-end data encryption to protect your data in transit and at rest. This will ensure only you and the intended receiver can read your message content.

Authentication: Add more layers to your security with string authentication and authorisation mechanisms, beyond just passwords. For example, you can enable 2-factor authentication to your applications with a password and an OTP (2 steps). So, whenever someone tries to log in to the application, they will need to enter both credentials to be allowed entry.

Strong passwords: Use strong password combinations on your edge and IoT devices that hackers can’t easily guess. Use longer passwords with uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters to make it stronger.

Regular updates and patches: Update your IoT and edge devices regularly to ensure they have the latest security measures. In addition, keep them patched for vulnerabilities so that no hackers can find or exploit them.

Backup and recovery: Always back up your data. Create multiple copies of data and store them in another location or server. In the event of a data loss, it will become easier for you to recover your precious data and continue your operations.

Network security: Protect your IoT and edge devices from external cyber threats by improving network security by using firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS), and more.

You can also add other security measures like identity and access management(IAM) to ensure only authenticated users can access your IoT and edge devices, zero trust security to limit access permissions, and more.

Strengthening Cloud and Edge Computing Security
Focus on improving your edge, cloud and IoT security measures. Start by assessing your cloud security architecture with solutions, such as cloud security posture management. It will monitor your cloud 24/7 to identify security loopholes, misconfigurations, and other IoT and edge computing risks. This will enable you to remove them quickly and secure your cloud and data from attackers.

Unified Security Protocols
As your network may have various kinds of IoT devices, you need to unify your security protocols. Maintaining consistency in protocols and standardising security measures will ease the process of detecting and neutralising vulnerabilities, patching devices, and improving their security.

Skill Development
Conduct skill development and training programs in your organisation to help your IT team keep up with recent technologies and tools in the field of IoT, edge computing, and cybersecurity.

Train them on grounds, such as edge and IoT device management, maintaining device security, and following security best practices. This will help them tackle IoT and edge computing challenges effectively. Suggest them to apply the learnings in both personal and professional lives for optimal data security.

IoT and edge computing are useful for multiple industries, be it manufacturing, ecommerce, or home use. Although they present security challenges, there are ways to overcome them. Let Microminder guide you on how to solve these challenges so you only get the goodness of IoT and edge computing. We offer:

IoT security services, such as IoT secure tunnelling, improving authentication, and Zero Trust IoT

IoT security testing services, such as IoT penetration testing, firmware analysis, and threat modelling to assess and secure your IoT ecosystem

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), a cloud-based security solution to secure your distributed systems, data, and networks

Cloud security posture management (CSPM) to detect, improve, and manage your cloud infrastructure

Talk to our experts to improve your IoT and edge computing security.