En la última década IoT ha sido relevante para hacer nuestras vidas más fáciles, pero un gran poder trae aparejada una gran responsabilidad, sobre todo con los riesgos de ciberseguridad.
IoT, in the past decade, been getting more of a necessity rather than a luxury or something which makes our lives easier.
The thing is that with great power, comes great responsibility. With many devices connected to the internet, many cybersecurity risks arise as well.
Those include devices from our everyday gadgets which can get infected with things like adware, to even our car. No need to worry, I’ll mention how to potentially protect yourself from these risks and how to remove adware.
Summary
All in all, these are the cybersecurity risks that we’ll be talking about:
1. Malware
2. Mobile Devices
3. Cloud Services
4. Privacy
5. Offline Life
Malware
Malicious programs are mostly targeted towards desktops, laptops, and smartphones. Mostly because important information is stored on these kinds of devices which you won’t find on a printer or anything like that.
Information like credit card numbers, documents, personal stuff, you see where this is going right? The good thing is that you can prevent a malware infection or remove one with free malware removal program.
How Dangerous is Malware for IoT and how Much Damage can it Really Cause?
The answer varies from “generally harmless” to “dangerous enough to bring down hospitals, banks, and big companies”.
For an example, the adware which I mentioned above is generally harmless – even though it’s still recommended to remove it.
Ransomware, on the other hand, has brought down whole banks and hospitals by encrypting important data on their devices.
The absolute basic steps for keeping your personal devices safe from malware include updating your software, using a security configuration, and relying on common sense.
Mobile Devices
Mobile devices are extremely useful in our daily lives. The problem is that always being connected to the internet in access points that are not entirely trustworthy, poses a bit of a security risk.
For an example, various people are connected to that cafeteria Wi-Fi which you also just connected into. How do you know that one of them is not “eavesdropping” on your network activities? In most cases, you don’t.
Security Precautions
So, what do you do? Stop relying on mobile devices? Not necessarily. For your average person, using a VPN and connecting on WPA/2 networks is more than enough to keep you safe.
And just generally be careful while using your mobile devices. It’s true that many security risks come with using them but most of them rely on actions from the user.
Cloud Services
Cloud services are extremely useful for storing data and keeping it safe. They also enable you to access all of your files, from all of your devices, in one single place. Can’t deny that this comes in handy.
However, they are essentially nothing more than computers which store your data remotely and send it over to you.
Which means that they are also susceptible to things like malware, hackers, and any other danger which lurks online.
Don’t get me wrong. Tech giants like Google, Apple, and any other big company are sure to try and keep your data as safe as possible.
But, with many devices connected to each other and with each device being connected to numerous services, accidents are bound to happen one day.
For an example, back in 2014, someone managed to hack into the iCloud accounts of many celebrities. He stole numerous of their nude photos which they had stored there and uploaded them to the world wide web for everyone to see.
Something which humouristically came to be known as “The fappening”. We’re not celebrities, but something similar could always happen to us.
Security Precautions
The only thing that you can do from your part is to choose a reputable company for cloud servicing and use strong passwords.
Privacy
IoT has been getting closer and closer to our personal lives. We use our devices to store pictures of us, personal information, banking information, and many other things.
Now we’re taking it to the next level with home assistants, security cameras, and other gadgets which have deeply have access to our privacy.
I think that you can already see how this plays a major cybersecurity risk when it comes to our privacy.
The microphone of a home assistant can be used to spy on our daily lives. Same goes with security cameras.
Truth be told, hacking into a home assistant is something that I haven’t heard about yet, but there’s a first time for everything.
When it comes to security cameras, thousands of them are already hacked. Not only that, but the ones who did the job also made them accessible through the world wide web.
I won’t give a link to these for obvious reasons, but you can always Google it if you don’t believe me.
Security Precautions
When it comes to simple remote access devices like security cameras, just use strong passwords.
Protecting your privacy in complex devices like computers is well, more complex than that. I’m afraid that you’ll have to make your own research that subject is not directly related to this article.
Offline Life
This is more of a future subject, but as silly as it sounds, IoT can also affect our offline life. Stealing personal property is the first thing that comes to mind. Such as household items or even your car.
Yes, your car is not connected to the internet, but a phone which unlocks it might be. In fact, the Tesla Model 3 already works in that way.
Say that someone figures out a way to make his phone unlock your car and boom, he now owns it.
To my knowledge, nothing like that has happened yet. As mentioned above, it’s more of a futuristic risk as the majority of us don’t use cars and houses which get unlocked with a phone.
Fuente: http://iotworm.com
