What Is IoT Security?
Definition of IoT Security
IoT Security is the act of securing Internet devices and the networks they’re connected to from threats and breaches by protecting, identifying, and monitoring risks all while helping fix vulnerabilities from a range of devices that can pose security risks to your business.
IoT Security Challenges
Along with understanding "what is IoT security," it's important to note the biggest challenges facing IoT security. IoT devices were not built with security in mind, leading to potential vulnerabilities in a multiple device system. In the majority of cases, there is no way to install security software on the device itself. In addition, they sometimes ship with malware on them, which then infects the network they are connected to.
Some network security doesn’t have the ability to detect IoT devices connected to it and/or the visibility to know what devices are communicating through the network.
How to address IoT Security Requirements?
IoT and security requirements can only be accomplished with an integrated solution that delivers visibility, segmentation, and protection throughout the entire network infrastructure, such as a holistic security fabric approach.
Your solution must have the following key abilities:
- Learn: With complete network visibility, security solutions can authenticate and classify IoT devices to build a risk profile and assign them to IoT device groups.
- Segment: Once the enterprise understands its IoT attack surface, IoT devices can be segmented into policy-driven groups based on their risk profiles.
- Protect: The policy-driven IoT groups and internal network segmentation enable monitoring, inspection, and policy enforcement based on the activity at various points within the infrastructure.
How Fortinet Can Help
The number of IoT devices being deployed into networks is growing at a phenomenal rate, up to 1 million connected devices each day. While IoT solutions are enabling new and exciting ways to improve efficiency, flexibility, and productivity, they also bring a new risk to the network. Frequently designed without security, IoT devices have become a new threat vector for bad actors to use when launching attacks. We have already seen several attacks leveraging these distributed, seemingly innocent devices.
To provide protection in the age of IoT, network operators need to have the tools and skills to:
- See and profile every device on the network, to understand what IoT devices are being deployed
- Control access to the network, both connecting to the network and determining where devices can access
- Monitor the devices on the network to ensure that they are not compromised and to take automatic and immediate action if they are
Fortinet provides these capabilities through our Network Access Control (NAC) product, FortiNAC. Fully integrated into the Security Fabric, FortiNAC delivers the visibility, control, and automated response needed to provide security in a world of IoT devices.
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What is IoT security?
IoT Security is the act of securing Internet devices and the networks they’re connected to from threats and breaches.
Why is IoT security important?
Frequently designed without security, IoT devices have become a new threat vector for bad actors to use when launching attacks.
