Digital transformation is a continuous process by which enterprises adapt to or drive disruptive changes in their customers and marketplaces, by leveraging digital competencies to create new business models, products, and services and the Internet of Things (IOT) is one such change.
IOT is connecting more devices every day, and the world is said to be headed for a world that will have 24 billion IOT devices globally by 2020. But with this rapid accelerating pace of such digitisation, it is becoming more difficult for companies to deal with the technology, particularly security, accordingly.
Quoting the IDC SSA CIO Survey 2016 & DX Survey 2017, John Tullet, IDC's research manager for IT services for Africa said "90% of SA CIOs are planning or executing digital transformation today while 80% of those not engaged in DX cite budget constraints as the cause," adding that security is the biggest technology-related challenge for CIOs.
He says companies are falling to realise that security is a subfield of everything else and that cyber criminals are two generations ahead of the companies, "Innovation accelerators driving digital transformation like IOT are areas which companies are exploring, the bad news there is that the cyber criminals have already been there and are adopting exceptional innovations. The measure of a good system is that it hold through consistently. As a security officer you need to get lucky all the time, the attacker only needs to get lucky once. So you basically betting that they won't find that one weak link in the chain but unfortunately they always almost do. In the IOT space, the bad guys are two generations ahead of us. They have access to tools, techniques and processes that we haven't even started to consider. They have embraced all of these technologies and they have operationalised it," he explained.
True to this sentiment, the latest Threat Intelligence Report by Nokia revealed that there is a steady increase in mobile device infections throughout 2016, with malware striking 1.35% of all mobile devices in October. The report further states that this there a new all-time high in mobile device malware infections, a sharp increase in compromised smartphones and major Internet of things (IOT) device security vulnerabilities.
The report further exposes major vulnerabilities in the rapidly expanding universe of IOT devices, underscoring the need for the industry to re-evaluate its IOT deployment strategies to ensure these devices are securely configured, managed and monitored. "The security of IOT devices has become a major concern. The Mirai botnet attacks last year demonstrated how thousands of unsecured IOT devices could easily be hijacked to launch crippling DDOS attacks," says Kevin McNamee, head of the Nokia Threat Intelligence Lab.
Paul Williams, country manager for SADC at Fortinet echoes similar sentiments, stating that according to Fortinet Threat Landscape Report Q4 2016, IOT is one of the biggest enablers of cyber-attacks. "The multiple customer engagements and the expanding number of devices and technologies within the IOT space make it a great cyber-attack enabler. In Africa 36% of vulnerabilities have been noted in the said period. It is quite surreal landscape of the IOT, where regular devices in your home-maybe even toasters someday-become sought after commodities for cyber criminals around the world," concluded Williams.
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