“The internet’s a scary place and when you connect things to it… these things are bound to happen if you didn’t think about that stuff up front.”

It’s all over the news – hackers gaining access to hotel rooms, starting cars remotely, compromising the utility grid – programming attacks have moved into the real world, targeting real things. This prompts the question: How real is the frequency and depth of these assaults?

IBM Distinguished Engineer and Chief Architect, IoT Security, Tim Hahn says that many of these stories you read in the media are specifically about being able to break into a system – most of them don’t have a lasting, malicious effect because the balance of the effort consisted of gaining access. It doesn’t mean the hackers were able to compromise systems or steal data.

Tim reminds us that what is old is new again. In other words, what is considered good security practice in the traditional IT areas should also be practiced when it comes to IoT security. He thinks that in the future, we will start to see more “security by default.” We’ll see a lot more attention to security as you take things out of the box and implement and deploy them.

In addition, he answers the following questions in this video:

• What new challenges to security does IoT introduce?
• Which organizations are addressing IoT security?
• What can a developer do to get ahead of IoT security?

To learn more and get your hands on the IoT security features IBM offers, go to http://www.ibm.com/iot/security.

You can also dig into your own IoT projects by watching the bite-sized learning videos in the Hands-on IoT show.