Learn More About IoT Security Solutions
What are IoT Security Solutions?
While the Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most rapidly expanding components of the technology sector, it’s also one of the least secure. IoT security solutions help companies monitor their IoT endpoints while enforcing strict data security and access control policies. IoT security software helps protect data stored in industrial control systems (ICS), smart cars, intelligent machinery, and other internet-enabled endpoints.
Many internet-enabled devices are built for consumers, but some are produced with virtually zero security measures in place. Security is paramount since IoT devices are now extensively used in healthcare and agriculture. Unsecured devices can be shut down, manipulated, or damaged, leading to unfortunate consequences.
IoT security tools aim to control network access by encrypting information stored in or produced by connected devices. It actively monitors devices to identify security risks and respond to them. In addition, these tools can secure APIs, offer device segmentation features, integrate with IoT management tools, discover potential attack surfaces, and sometimes uncover unmanaged devices.
IoT security solutions are sometimes called embedded security software as it secures edge devices. Depending on the solution, users can have complete visibility over IoT devices and networks.
In short, IoT security solutions can prevent connected smart devices from unwanted access or manipulation and ensure secure transfer, management, and data ingestion from IoT devices. IoT security solutions also ensure that IoT devices and management hubs receive regular security updates. This tool can also improve efficiency and benefits related to IoT operations, enabling organizations to stay informed on emerging cyber threats or vulnerabilities.
What are the Common Features of IoT Security Solutions?
The following are some core features of IoT security solutions:
Asset management: This functionality allows administrators to keep records of each network-connected device and its activity. Users can add new devices, disconnect old ones, and restrict access to approved parties.
Compliance management: This feature enforces data security policies and allows users to audit and monitor asset and infrastructure security. Products with this capability typically comply with PII, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI, and other regulatory standards.
Behavioral biometrics: This functionality allows monitoring of user-endpoint interactions, providing administrators valuable insights about end-user behavior. This data can be used to create baselines for performance and behavior when looking for anomalies.
Endpoint intelligence: This feature integrates threat data with security tools and delivers information to IoT devices. Users can utilize this threat intelligence data, such as new malware and vulnerabilities, to provide new protection solutions specific to their endpoint devices.
Continuous monitoring: Real-time and continuous monitoring feature allows IT and security professionals to monitor systems and detect anomalies at all times. This feature alerts administrators to malfunctions, security threats, and other abnormal behavior.
Remediation: The remediation feature allows investigation and resolution into IoT devices when incidents occur. This functionality enables individuals and security teams to track incidents to their source and identify suspicious actors or malware.
Response automation: This feature allows for removing manual labor from remediation tasks. With this feature, the user can resolve common threats, known malware, or accidental misuse easily and automatically.
Endpoint isolation: When threats are discovered, or individual endpoints are infected with malware, access must be cut off from the IoT network as a whole. With endpoint isolation, users can quarantine an infected endpoint to restrict network access until the incident is resolved.
What are the Benefits of IoT Security Solutions?
IoT is part of the fourth industrial revolution (or Industry 4.0), which has connected millions of devices for personal and professional use. Companies utilizing internet-enabled medical devices, intelligent machinery, or other smart devices should protect information stored or produced by users. Several factors can lead to IoT security breaches. This includes the lack of standardization around IoT security, human errors, and improper understanding of IoT technology. With a robust IoT security system in place, organizations can secure their devices, ensure proper functionality and data protection, and prevent penalties resulting from breaches, hacks, or any other kinds of security incidents.
The following are some of the notable benefits of using IoT security platforms:
Protection: Not all devices and machines were originally designed to connect to the internet. Companies rush to bring smart, new technology-enabled products to market, often at the cost of proper security design. Many products possess easily accessible flaws and little to no product access control. These devices should be password protected, and the data stored within them should be encrypted. A hacker can effortlessly obtain unencrypted information without privileges to access an IoT endpoint. These devices should also be equipped with firewall controls to block malicious traffic and antivirus or antimalware solutions to prevent further damage if already infected. IoT security tools can help organizations perform these activities effectively.
Management: Keeping track of dozens or hundreds of endpoint devices can be tough. IoT security tools help companies create an inventory of assets and control who has access to them. This can be useful for bulk updates or patches. Administrators can now control the device’s life cycle and access its information. Any stored sensitive or business data will be wiped if a device is no longer in use. Administrators can restrict network access for the device and investigate its origin if an unapproved new endpoint appears.
Monitor: Device discovery is a key benefit of the monitor feature. With device discovery, users can get the origin details of the device and information on its interactions. The monitor feature helps companies ensure their endpoints are operating efficiently and alert them to abnormal behavior. The company can remediate any security issues discovered after investigating an abnormality.
Who Uses IoT Security Solutions?
Below are a few examples of groups that use IoT security solutions.
Security teams: Security teams are the most frequent users of IoT security solutions. Many businesses with large pools of internet-enabled endpoint devices create teams to manage endpoint life cycles, monitor their performance, and resolve security issues.
IT personnel: Other primary users of IoT security solutions are IT staff, though their role will likely be more focused on managing device life cycles and permissions. They will also update the software or firmware running on the device and patch any relevant flaws. IT's role in IoT security management will vary depending on the company’s staff and the size of its security operations teams.
Vertical industry professionals: Many vertical industries may have non-security professionals managing IoT operations. These teams should be more cautious, as a lack of security knowledge and experience can lead to events like data breaches. A few examples of business verticals without specialized security expertise include manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, and healthcare organizations.
Software Related to IoT Security Solutions
Related solutions that can be used together with IoT security solutions include:
IoT device management software: This software is used to track, manage, and monitor IoT devices, ensuring each device is protected from vulnerabilities. Since an IoT infrastructure will have hundreds or thousands of endpoints spread out across multiple locations, this tool offers the ability to update the software and firmware of devices remotely.
Endpoint protection software: This software and IoT security tools are designed to manage and secure devices connected to a business's network and remediate security issues as they arise. Endpoint protection tools typically cover more traditional devices such as laptops, desktops, and mobile devices, while IoT security solutions are designed for any number of unique devices.
Attack surface management software: These tools help users continuously monitor networks, cloud services, and assets. Doing so makes it possible to identify and remediate vulnerabilities.
Unified endpoint management (UEM) software: UEM software is similar to endpoint protection and IoT security software. While they are designed to manage similar devices as endpoint protection tools, they lack the malware protection and incident response feature in IoT security and endpoint protection solutions.
Zero trust networking software: This software continually verifies user permissions using adaptive authentication. It allows organizations to monitor user behavior and network activity to adapt authentication requirements on an individual basis.
Network access control (NAC) software: NAC software unifies endpoint security with network security. These tools allow approved devices to gain access to a network. Many IoT security solutions provide NAC as a feature, but traditional NAC tools are not equipped for the scale of IoT systems.
Threat intelligence software: Threat intelligence software offers information regarding the latest cybersecurity threats, exploits, and new forms of malware. It can analyze threats on different devices and networks and describe the best remediation strategies for emerging threats.
Challenges with IoT Security Solutions
IoT devices are inherently vulnerable. Most IoT devices have minimal memory, storage, and computing capabilities, making it harder for security implementation. Even with the implementation of security best practices, the growing number of devices and attack vectors make it challenging to secure IoT devices. Therefore, companies must rely heavily on IoT security software solutions to detect and mitigate vulnerabilities.
However, IoT security platforms comes with its own set of challenges.
Need for skilled employees: With IoT still being explored, there is a gap in the skills of IoT security professionals. Without fully understanding IoT devices' security risks, securing them using a software solution is hard. Upskilling employees and hiring talent with cybersecurity and IoT security expertise are ways to counter this.
Need for IoT management software: IoT security systems may offer an interface for monitoring threats and installing updates across devices but might require IoT management software for general management of devices and data scraping. Buyers should research to what degree the IoT security systems will integrate with an IoT management system in place. Organizations also need to consider other integrations, perhaps involving enterprise-level IT security tools.
Need for frequent updates: As new vulnerabilities are discovered and resolved, it’s crucial to distribute the updated version of the software to all IoT devices. Otherwise, attackers will be able to exploit the vulnerabilities.
Physical security risks: If attackers have physical access to the IoT device, they could open the device and exploit the hardware. This is one of the biggest challenges of IoT security software, as attackers can bypass the software protection and read the contents of the memory components directly.
How to Buy IoT Security Solutions
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for IoT Security Solutions
The modern IoT ecosystem is complex, especially industrial IoT. IoT security tools are not a “one-size-fits-all” solution. Therefore, it’s crucial to consider a platform that offers the necessary security features or customize a system that meets the company requirements.
Understanding the IoT ecosystem and protecting IoT devices is essential. More precisely, buyers should perform an internal assessment about what IoT security means to the organization. This step is usually called requirements gathering, and its success can impact the effectiveness of the tool chosen for the specific use case. Having a precise understanding of the budget to purchase the software is also essential. This will empower buyers to go for a solution with essential features that fit the budget and avail additional features if there’s more to spend.
Some of the common and essential features in the case of IoT security platforms will be device authentication, data encryption, performance monitoring, threat detection, asset discovery, device authorization, and security alerts. Apart from the basic features, buyers should also check which specific features are essential for their business use case.
Compare IoT Security Solutions
Create a long list
Evaluating software products should start with a long list of IoT security software vendors. At this point, instead of trying to find the best option, buyers should try to better understand the software products available for purchase.
This initial long list can contain any software solution that meets the company's minimum requirements. The idea here is to eliminate products that don’t provide critical functionality.
Create a short list
Creating a short list aims to reduce the number of IoT security products and get closer to a purchase decision. In other words, creating a short list allows buyers to get even more specific about their ideal IoT security solution.
To shorten the list, buyers could look for specific features, such as agentless monitoring, real-time metrics, offline monitoring for resource-constrained devices, vulnerability management, threat intelligence, 24x7 vendor support, resolution capability. More precisely, buyers can assess whether the remaining software products have nice-to-have features.
There isn’t a specific rule regarding the number of software products that can make their way to the short list. However, it’s better to create a short list, preferably with no more than five to seven products.
Conduct demos
Product demos are beneficial to understand a product better and compare it with other products in the short list. To effectively differentiate the products, buyers should test the IoT security products with the same use cases. During demos, buyers can examine the usability and user experience of the product, check whether the features work as advertised, and ask questions regarding the features the company needs the most.
Selection of IoT Security Solutions
Choose a selection team
Buying IoT security solutions is costly, so businesses need to ensure the right stakeholders make the best decision. The company should assemble a team, which will be crucial to successfully purchasing and implementing IoT security software.
The selection team should include the relevant stakeholders of the company who can use the IoT security solution, scrutinize it, and assess whether it will meet all the business requirements. Decision-makers, IT managers, IT administrators, and security team professionals could be the primary stakeholders included in such a team.
Negotiation
Product prices on the software vendor's site are not always fixed. Having an open conversation with the vendor is advisable regarding licensing and pricing. In some instances, vendors may be keen to provide discounts for multi-year contracts. Vendors may also remove certain optional features and lower the price.
Although vendors may try to convince buyers to purchase extra features or licenses, companies may never utilize them. Therefore, it’s advisable to start small regarding functionality and licensing.
Final decision
The best way to make the final decision is by implementing the software on a small scale. This will give buyers the confidence that the IoT security solution they chose is the best. If the software solution doesn’t work as expected or has undeveloped features, it must be reevaluated.
In most cases, software vendors offer a free trial of the product. If the software meets the expectation during the trial period, buyers can confidently proceed with the contracting or purchasing process.
IoT Security Solutions Trends
Automated security
Automation will become more prevalent within IoT security. With the number of IoT devices increasing almost exponentially, it’s becoming increasingly hard to analyze log data. Dealing with data points in the order of millions or billions requires machine learning. Therefore, automated security will become more crucial for IoT security.
Standardization
There is no specific standard regarding IoT device security among different vendors. This disparity is the reason for several security issues, which is a nightmare for security professionals. Securing IoT devices and data becomes an organized attempt by standardizing security protocols and systems, which is something to anticipate in the near future.
