Articles about Internet of Things

New research shows that critical manufacturing vulnerabilities rose 148 percent in the first half of 2021 with ransomware-as-a-service driving attacks.

The report from Nozomi Networks finds ICS-CERT vulnerabilities increased by 44 percent too. Manufacturing is the most susceptible industry with the energy sector proving vulnerable too.

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Internet of things devices pose a number of challenges for developers, not least security issues and having to work with limited hardware capability.

We talked to François Baldassari of connected device specialist Memfault to find out why it may be better if IoT device developers and engineers were to have the kinds of DevOps tools that only software teams have traditionally had access to.

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Just 19 percent of US business professionals claim to understand the benefits of 5G, according to a survey by Ciena, carried out in partnership with research firm Dynata.

The main benefit associated with 5G is 'faster access speeds', cited by 61 percent of respondents. By contrast, only six percent of respondents think 'reduced latency' is a major benefit, only 18 percent named 'more reliable connectivity' and only 16 percent recognized 'better wireless coverage' as a major benefit.

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Demand for connected devices is causing a severe developer skills shortage and a crisis in wellbeing as developers come under increasing pressure.

New research for the Qt Company, carried out by Forrester Consulting, finds 75 percent of connected device manufacturers say that demand is outstripping supply. At the same time 65 percent are worried about the wellbeing of their developers.

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Widening visibility gaps in cloud infrastructure, end-user devices and Internet of Things (IoT) device initiatives are leading to increased risk and security incidents according to a study carried out by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) for Axonius.

More than 70 percent of respondents report that additional complexity in their environments has contributed to increasing visibility gaps. More than half cite the rapid shift to remote work and changes to technology infrastructure necessitated by security and privacy regulations as key reasons for this increased complexity.

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Ransomware attacks grew by 485 percent in 2020 compared to 2019. Attacks in the first and second quarters accounting for 64 percent of all attacks or 19 percent higher than the first two quarters of 2019.

This is one of the findings of the latest Consumer Threat Landscape report from Bitdefender. which also shows that IoT devices with proprietary operating systems were responsible for 96 percent of vulnerabilities even though they account for only 34 percent of consumer devices.

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Fileless malware attacks were up nearly 900 percent in 2020 and cryptominers grew by 25 percent, but ransomware payloads dropped by 48 percent compared with 2019.

These are findings of the latest internet security report from WatchGuard Technologies which is based on endpoint threat intelligence following WatchGuard's acquisition of Panda Security in June 2020.

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With the UK going into its first financial recession since 2009 as a consequence of COVID-19, many businesses are struggling to stay alive in the current business climate. The economy has shrunk by 20.4 percent compared with the first three months of 2020 following months of businesses being forced to stay shut, furloughed workforces and a reduction in consumer expenditure. Additional restrictions in place at the time of writing are ratcheting up the financial pressure on multiple industries, with the prospect of a ‘double-dip’ recession an increasing prospect.

Without the right technology and continuity processes in place, many organizations were unable to adapt their models quickly enough to survive when they needed to. Now it’s a wake-up call to get the right solutions implemented to ride the waves of any future economic storms that come their way. COVID-19 has accelerated the need to work collaboratively and stay connected to protect both society and the economy. 

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Canonical is making Ubuntu Core 20, a minimal, containerized version of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS for IoT devices and embedded systems, generally available from today.

It improves device security with secure boot, full disk encryption, and secure device recovery and builds on the Ubuntu application ecosystem in order to create ultra-secure smart things.

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Despite an inarguably terrible year and many concerning events happening around the world -- pandemic notwithstanding -- technology is still advancing at breakneck speeds. That looks to continue well into the coming year, with many fascinating and emergent solutions bubbling to the surface.

Here are 10 emerging technologies everyone should be on the lookout for in 2021:

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The consumer Internet of Things (IoT) has exploded into the connected world, making domestic life richer, easier and more entertaining. Consumer IoT comprises a set of connected devices that have a discrete function, enabled or supplemented by a data-gathering capability through on-board sensors. In any home or office environment an individual may come into contact with 'smart' appliances or devices such as coffee machines, cameras, heating systems, locks, lights, health trackers, refrigerators and TV’s, to name a few.

Criticism of IoT security, or lack-thereof, has highlighted serious deficiencies in both design and implementation of IoT devices. Unfortunately, consumers are critically dependent on device manufacturers for the security of their devices. With a rushed and greater rate of adoption, a number of risks have been introduced, attracting close attention from threat actors aiming to steal valuable information and disrupt services. However, all hope is not lost -- at a consumer level, there are still a few basic techniques that can be used to protect IoT devices from attacks.

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There are likely to be around 31 billion IoT devices by the end of this year and we already know that they can be vulnerable to attacks.

Israeli company Karamba Security is launching its XGuard Monitor platform aimed at managing the security of large numbers of IoT devices.

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Smart cities hold out the promise of a future where tech-driven urban spaces provide faster, smarter, greener living. But for this to work requires a high-performance digital infrastructure, not just fast internet.

Smart cities need to be built with a connected infrastructure and with future proofing in mind. To find out about the data center strategies required to make this work we spoke to Bill Fenick, VP of enterprise at interconnection specialist Interxion.

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Internet users in the US vastly underestimate how often their home networks are targeted by cyber threats according to a new report from Comcast.

The first Xfinity Cyber Health Report combines data from a new consumer survey with threat data collected by the xFi Advanced Security platform and finds 95 percent of survey respondents underestimate the volume of attacks they face each month.

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Internet of Things (IoT) devices are generating huge volumes of data and that represents a challenge for organizations when it comes to processing and storing it.

We spoke to Karthik Ranganathan, CTO of the company behind the distributed SQL database YugabyteDB, to find out how businesses can cope with the complexity and performance issues that handling IoT data and its associated metadata raises.

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