RAREblog

The Internet of Things (IoT) is cool, and business has realised it's going to be big. But is it going to be secure enough? I'm normally a pretty laissez-faire sort of chap, but I am very concerned about the current attitude towards security on the Internet of Things. I posted recently on The Analogies project , and I'll be talking about this at an IoT meeting later this year. But this is a problem right now . Here's one example. I was recently approached by someone from an open-source IoT project to see if I'd like to get involved. I had a look on their website, and what they were doing looked great. Except... There was no mention of security . I asked, and got the reply that this was not a concern, as they assumed that the home network was secure . Don't assume the home network is secure Sadly many home networks are easily hackable. The recent excitement over OpenSSL means that most hobbyist web-servers using https have been vulnerable for a...

Lunchtime at Covent Garden I've just got back from a delightful lunch near Covent Garden with an old friend, Ron Condon. Way back in the early 80s, I was running a software house and Ron was editor of a rising upstart newspaper called datalink . The industry hadn't yet been infested by PR roaches, and I was able to build up a great relationship with one of Ron's reporters. We gave datalink lots of good stories and they gave us lots of good press coverage. Many years have gone by. Ron and I have both retired, and we have both found things to do that keep us busier than ever. Ron now edits contributions to The Analogies Project, which finds and shares analogies that help non-specialists understand issues in IT security. I'm getting more and more worried about the in -security of the Internet of Things. My post-lunch homework is to come up with an analogy which can help the person in the street understand why IoT security matters so much, and why it cannot sa...