Companies Are Working Hard to Make the IoT More Secure

5 Recommendations to Secure the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a hot button topic. Experts, users and commentators are worried about keeping it secure. Progress – or at least news – is being made, however. During the past few weeks, several announcements have been made, suggesting that the industry is hard at work at putting people’s fears to rest.

The highest profile announcement was made late last week: Security firm Avast Software acquired AVG, another security firm, for $1.3 billion. The acquisition is designed in part to enable Avast to move into the IoT security space. If the deal closes, the combined company will have a presence in about 400 million endpoints, including about 160 million mobile devices.

The second announcement, which was also made last week, is that SAP and WISeKey, a Swiss company, are collaborating. According to Engineering.com, WISeKey offers a managed cryptographic root of trust (RoT) that can be recognized by both applications and operating systems. The trust level can be extended to IoT devices using SAP’s HANA platform.

A third announcement last week was made by the Swedish firm Clavister, which introduced what it called a fully virtualized, carrier-grade security operating system that aims to offer comprehensive protection for mobile networks. Clavister says that its platform does not rely on legacy hardware. Instead, it’s offered in a virtualized software format. Clavister says it offers as high a level of security and all the customary features of more expensive legacy approaches.

The final announcement, from late last month, is a collaboration between Microsemi and Veracity Security Intelligence. The companies aim to develop secure networking technology for industrial Ethernet deployments, according to the press release. A comment in the release from Steve Litchfield, Microsemi’s executive vice president and chief strategy officer, points directly at IoT security as an area of need.

These four announcements represent the tip of the iceberg of recent IoT-related security announcements. The bottom line is that the IoT indeed is a scary topic when it comes to security. At the same time, however, it seems that a great number of creative companies have their eyes on making it a whole lot less frightening.

Carl Weinschenk covers telecom for IT Business Edge. He writes about wireless technology, disaster recovery/business continuity, cellular services, the Internet of Things, machine-to-machine communications and other emerging technologies and platforms. He also covers net neutrality and related regulatory issues. Weinschenk has written about the phone companies, cable operators and related companies for decades and is senior editor of Broadband Technology Report. He can be reached at cweinsch@optonline.net and via twitter at @DailyMusicBrk.

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