Want to Use IoT? Here Are Some Key Questions You Should Ask Before Using It

Have you ever thought of an AC starting just by your voice command and cooling your room out in a jiffy? Well, if yes than IoT is making your dreams come true. We as humans have a tendency of being in a more likely comfortable zone. A zone where we can just relax and every other thing are controlled by a secondary factor and there is absolutely nothing to worry about.

Yes, IoT is more than you think and you can ever imagine. It is surely making the human lives a lot easier by its magnificent feature but after every good thing, there is a dark side too. Still, there are plenty of questions which are in vain as far as the security of IoT is taken into consideration. No matter how great functionality anything offers, if their security metrics is compromised, it will be a deadly experience altogether.

With an intention to gather every possible aspect of IoT, here are some of the most critical questions which are needed to be answered in the process of deploying an IoT solution.

What is IoT?

An IoT often known as the Internet of Things offers divergent solutions to every business module as well as are compatible with the majority of the home appliances. It is often used for the reduction in the operational costs with the intention of an increment in the revenue streams.

How Secure your stuff is?

If we consider starters, the main device must be secured from any type of attack or from any harmful conditions. There is no doubt that the next few years will be a lot more technology driven. Such technology-based world will drive down the costs and will include the Internet in every work appliance ranging at different prices.

In the anticipation of the same thing, some of my colleagues have identified the top 7 properties of great highly secured devices.

1. Hardware-driven trust:

Does each of your electronic devices have its unique identity? Are they inseparable from each other by some other security means? Are they inseparable from each other by on the basis of hardware?

2. A Small trustworthy computing base

• Whether the device's software is outside its trustworthy computing base?
• If yes, then what are the possible measures to levy some strict security metrics on such device's software?

3. Defense Metrics up to the mark

• Are most of the device software you are using have a solid defense mechanism?
• What are the possible ways through which you can secure your device software to an absolute level of perfection?

4. Compartmentalization?

Are you using a good hardware driven barrier for stopping failures in order to prevent to propagate to other components?

5. Certificate driven authentication

• Do any of your devices use Certificate?
• Do your devices use certificates driven with a strong password?

6. Renewable Security

Does your device software have the ability to update automatically to provide a more secure state?

7. Failure in Reporting

Do you have the ability to levy an instant solution to the failure occurrence as far as the manufacturer is considered?

What is the level of security of your connections?

IoT’s security must be more to the point as there is no sort of human intervention involved. Everything is operated by the device software and that is where the security level should be top-notch.

Taking you straight to the point, when you are seeing a bunch of devices communicating with each other over the Internet, how will you levy data confidentiality as well as the integrity mechanism?

Thus, whenever you are choosing an IoT monitoring solution, you should make sure that it is using the industry based data encryption technique.

For example:

The Azure IoT Suite does secure the internet connection between the IoT hub and IoT device with the help of a Transport Layer Security (TLS) Standard.

Another essential question is how you will prevent the inbound connections from posing some havoc on your devices?

One thing which you should make sure is that only the devices should be allowed to make or release connections and there should be no involvement of the IoT hub in any case.

As far as we speak about the IoT hub, make sure that the one you will be using on your system should have the quality of maintaining a queue for each device and must wait for every other device to connect.

If you are deploying the above solutions in your device software choosing process, you will surely face no issue and all your work can be done in a buttery smooth manner.

How much secure is the cloud solution?

All of us know the sheer importance of clouds in the 21st century. From data storing to its retrieval, cloud storage technology has taken file operations to a whole new level.

However, there are certain which needs to be asked as far as the cloud security is taken into consideration:

1. Network traffic separation

Is your device IoT traffic divergent from the other network traffic by using an IoT gateway or any other means?

2. Monitoring

• How well is the network traffic inspected?
• How will you know if the security constraints are compromised?
• Are the unmanaged devices able to access your cloud services?

3. Security Controls

• How well you know the service level agreement with your Cloud provider?
• Which is the security controls levied and maintained by your security provider which you will access internally in any case?

4. Encryption and security key

• Is your IoT capable to define the various access control policies for every other security key?
• Is the data in the cloud encrypted?

All in all, IoT can be a great boon to the present day humans and can further enhance the way we live and our lifestyle to a whole new level of thrill and greatness. As a user who has a lot more interest in IoT, the above-asked questions will surely solve all your queries and can make you a lot smarter in using this technology to a good effect.