California’s IoT cybersecurity bill: What it gets right and wrong
California state lawmakers should be lauded for SB 327, their well-intentioned legislative attempt at tackling one of the most pressing issues in the tech sector: IoT security. But as the law went into effect at the start of the year, they will also (unfortunately) soon be faced with the reality that it is inadequate for…
Burner phones are an eavesdropping risk for international travelers
In recent years, burner phones have become an obligatory part of the international business traveler’s toolkit. But though these devices are designed to minimize the amount of stored data available for capture by malicious actors in a foreign country, burner phones actually give attackers an opening to another, potentially more valuable, form of data: conversations…
Facial recognition hardware to reach over 800 million devices by 2024
A new report from Juniper Research found that facial recognition hardware, such as Face ID on recent iPhones, will be the fastest growing form of smartphone biometric hardware. This means it will reach over 800 million in 2024, compared to an estimated 96 million in 2019. The new research, Mobile Payment Authentication: Biometrics, Regulation &…
IoT is an ecosystem, as secure as its weakest link
Remember when, three years ago, several Mirai botnets hit DNS provider Dyn and caused part of the Internet to be unreachable for most users in North America and Europe? For a moment there it really seemed that IoT security would become an indisputable necessity. Unfortunately, that did not happen, and security professionals and consumers are…
Integrating security into IoT projects is not easy, but it’s increasingly urgent
With an installed base of 44 billion connected devices projected for 2023, the amount of data and information generated and shared will reach zettabytes of data, according to ABI Research. “Much of that data will be sensitive, whether about an individual’s privacy or confidential business information. As such, it presents a lucrative opportunity for threat…
How to reduce the attack surface associated with medical devices
As the number of connected medical devices continues to rise, so does healthcare organizations’ attack surface. “Most medical devices available in the healthcare system today were not built with security in mind and it will take years until they are replaced (if they are at all) with next-generation devices,” says Leon Lerman, CEO and co-founder…
Total global shipments of secure embedded hardware to double by 2023
Accelerating demand for embedded security in industrial and automotive segments is driving the market for technologies such as secure microcontrollers (MCU) and trusted platform modules (TPM). ABI Research forecasts that total global shipments of secure embedded hardware will double by 2023, surpassing the 4 billion mark. TPMs are finally gaining momentum, notably in new industrial…
Hacking our way into cybersecurity for medical devices
Hospitals are filled with machines connected to the internet. With a combination of both wired and wireless connectivity, knowing and managing which devices are connected has become more complicated and, consequently, the institutions’ attack surface has expanded. When did these devices get smart? A brief timeline shows the FDA didn’t start regulating the connectivity of…
Worldwide spending on security solutions expected to continue growing
Worldwide spending on security-related hardware, software, and services is forecast to reach $103.1 billion in 2019, an increase of 9.4% over 2017. This pace of growth is expected to continue for the next several years as industries invest heavily in security solutions to meet a wide range of threats and requirements. $133.8 billion by 2022…
The attack surface is growing faster than it has at any other point in the history of technology
Avast launched its annual Threat Landscape Report, detailing the biggest security trends facing consumers in 2019 as collected by the Avast Threat Labs team. Some of the key security trends that will evolve or continue to impact consumers in 2019 include: The dawn of adversarial AI We foresee the emergence of a class of attacks…