IoT Cybersecurity Alliance
In a recent announcement, the telecom giant AT&T stated that they are entering into a partnership with Trustonic, Symantec Corp. (SYMC), Palo Alto Networks Inc. (PANW), Nokia Corp. (NOK), and Business Machines Corp. (IBM) in order to develop an alliance to take care of the security issues with Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Many telecom experts believe that the market of IoT devices will show a significant increase in the near future.
The collaboration of these tech companies is popularly called as the IoT Cybersecurity Alliance. Reports indicate that these companies will work together to find ways on how to offer better security to IoT segment. In a statement, the officials from AT&T added that attackers are looking for the vulnerabilities in IoT devices.
AT&T senior vice president of Advanced Solutions, Mo Katibeh recently said, “The explosive growth in the number of IoT devices is only expected to continue; therefore, so must the associated cybersecurity protections. Today’s businesses are connecting devices ranging from robots on factory floors to pacemakers and refrigerators. Helping these organizations stay protected requires innovation across the whole IoT ecosystem to enable sustainable growth.”
Dyn, which is a company that allows people to connect to websites, was flooded with web traffic back in October. As a result of this, many people were not able access PayPal, Spotify, and Twitter for a very long time. The officials from the company stated that the unexpected web traffic came from hacked IoT devices.
AT&T Internet Service
The IoT Cybersecurity Alliance firmly believes that protecting the application layers, cloud, network, and applications will play a crucial role in the protection of IoT devices. The Chief Security Officer of AT&T, Bill O’Hern said, “Be it a connected car, pacemaker or coffee maker, every connected device is a potential new entry point for cyberattacks. Yet, each device requires very different security considerations. It’s become essential for industry leaders and innovators like those in the founding members of this Alliance, to work together to help the industry find more holistic security approaches for IoT.”
Reports indicate that the IoT market will be tremendously big and the worldwide spending on IoT services and devices will approximately reach $2 trillion during the year 2017. The worldwide spending on IoT services and devices was estimated to be about $737 last year.
