IoT requires new ways of thinking about security

As companies like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), AT&T (NYSE: T), GE, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and others fight for a piece – or the whole pie – of the connected home in the Internet of Things (IoT) era, companies big and small are going to need to think differently about how they secure all these "things."

AT&T Mobility CEO Glenn Lurie talked about his company's foray into the home security and automation market during his keynote at CTIA Super Mobility 2015 in Las Vegas last week. Presumably, the operator knows a thing or two about security, especially as it pertains to the home, and it will be super vigilant about what it connects in consumers' homes.  

The company is working with partners like Nest, the smart home thermostat company that Google acquired back in 2014. The Nest thermostat is one example of a lot of smarts packed into a little device, and while it's gone through its fair share of crashes, iterations and upgrades, it has the super powers of Google to help solve its problems. Others don't have that breadth and scale to tap into when things go wrong.

The problem the industry is trying to figure out is what the security paradigm is going to look like for these devices. "The very troubling thing I think we see right now is … people trying to layer more and more complexity into those systems to try to solve security and other problems or just putting too much intelligence" or computing power into the devices, said Shane Dyer, founder of a startup called Arrayent that supplies its IoT software platform to the likes of Osram Sylvania, Whirlpool and Maytag. There's not enough IT professionals in the world to keep these devices secure when there are billions and billions of them. For complete post see here