Eva Chen Trend Micro
Eva Chen, Trend Micro
Time is running at a crazy speed in the field of technology. When Trend Micro has founded nearly 30 years ago, mobile phones were relatively difficult to use, disproportionately expensive and had a rather limited “intelligence”. They are now more powerful than the NASA devices that allowed humans to walk on the moon! Over the years, the mobility industry has experienced remarkable growth, as evidenced by the success of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.
The mobile has indeed become the epicenter of the connected world. More than ever, smartphones – and connected objects (IoT) – impact every aspect of our daily lives. But in this increasingly connected digital world, new risks are emerging. Only connected intelligence can help build a safer connected world.
A world dominated by data
Connected objects surround us. They govern our hobbies, make us more productive at work, happier and healthier. They contribute to the smooth running of our factories, streamline work processes and optimize the various services provided.
The Gartner estimates that 20.4 million objects connected to the planet by 2020. But these generate an astronomical amount of data.
Risks are everywhere
The connected world in which we live is, however, increasingly exposed to cyber threats. We see it in many areas:
– The smart home: The Mirai botnet has compromised mass connected devices to launch DDoS attacks that have had a major impact on the Internet in 2016. Everything related to the home, from baby phones to connected locks, can be impacted.
– Smart factories: Hackers have also targeted connected objects within factories and critical infrastructures. The latest example is the attack of a Ukrainian energy supplier whose hundreds of thousands of users suffered a breakdown in December 2015 and 2016. A Trend Micro study just revealed how the cities of ‘Are particularly vulnerable to potential attacks.
– Connected cars: Researchers have also repeatedly shown that unprotected connected vehicles can be hacked, with far-reaching consequences, with hackers being able to take remote control of the steering wheel, brakes or engine.
The recipe for success
It is becoming increasingly difficult to protect the growing number of connected devices. Buggy codes, open network ports, bad authentication, undetected files, usage changes, insecure network protocols … all this represents an additional challenge. Fortunately, there is a solution. The recipe for success is based on three points: anticipate the evolution of infrastructures towards the Cloud, connected objects, and 5G; integrate the change in user behavior, and protect against all threats.
It will not be easy. The two historically separate worlds of IT and OT are rapidly converging into the IoT sphere, exposing companies and their employees to new risks – while the industry faces a shortage of cybersecurity skills. Success, however, will depend on the choice of security based on intelligence connected to all levels of IoT: hardware (home appliance, industrial machine, connected car); the network; the control center (voice assistance, ICS, Cloud controller); and the “data analyzer” in the cloud.
In practice, this means: guard against machine vulnerabilities; be vigilant about the network inspection; strengthen systems at the control center level and protect servers in the cloud. More importantly, this approach must be accompanied by connected intelligence that collects data from millions of IoT sensors around the world, analyzing them in the cloud, then blacklisting and blocking connections from suspicious devices. Artificial intelligence also has an important role to play here: finding the needle in the haystack, ie suspicious scenarios that may herald future attacks within IoT data.
In order to stay ahead of the hackers, it is therefore essential to ensure data security and the proper functioning of key systems by relying on the power of connected intelligence and strong partnerships between major players. Of the industry.
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Eva Chen is CEO and co-founder of Trend Micro
