Johannesburg, 21 May 2014
Cyber terrorism, cyber war and widespread chaos caused by hacking aren't the realm of science fiction any more – they are all possible, says David Jacobson, co-founder and technical director at SYNAQ.
Jacobson says the greater the reach of the Internet, the greater the exposure and vulnerability of all things.
"In an ‘Internet of Everything' age in which over 50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet in a few years from now, everything becomes an access point to everything else. This means that the number of vulnerabilities increases exponentially. Unfortunately, manufacturers are rushing to take connected products to market without fully considering the security implications," he says.
Jacobson notes the risks are heightened by the fact that most of the connected devices of the future will not be physically protected.
"Now, data resides in physically secured servers in a data centre. But when everything is connected, there is little or no physical security around all the access points. And if you can touch it, you can potentially hack it. Take traffic lights, for example. When they are all Internet-enabled, hackers could use them as entry points to traffic systems, and they could cause traffic chaos. Connected watches could allow hackers into your home, and from there, into your enterprise. Smart homes could be hacked and security systems overridden by criminals intending to do physical harm.
"With every vendor scrambling to put the Internet into TVs, cars, watches, home appliances and everything else, we need to take urgent steps to build security standards that will protect these devices and their users in future," says Jacobson. "If we don't, we will find ourselves in the same position as we are with e-mail, where the smtp protocol, which was designed without today's threats in mind, is just too widely deployed to change.
"To have the entire world connected and all devices sharing information is an exciting prospect, but if we don't act very quickly in bringing out world-class security standards, we will be in big trouble. Cities, utilities and entire countries could be hacked. There is potential for chaos," he says.
SYNAQ will showcase its e-mail security products at the upcoming ITWeb Security Summit, in Sandton, from 27 May.
Editorial contact
Leigh Angelo
(011) 869 9153
leigh@tradeprojects.co.za
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