The Internet of Things (IoT) is the future. Businesses around the world are embracing IoT because of its inherent ability to offer rich supplies of data. Healthcare, retail, and manufacturing industries are adopting at a larger scale to enable their business to set apart from the competition.
There are tremendous benefits that IoT brings to consumers and businesses. But business leaders also need to consider all the potential risks by identifying the cybersecurity vulnerabilities it exposes their businesses to. Moreover, it is crucial to have an effective cybersecurity tech stack and stringent governance policies to keep the business network secure from various threats. Here are a few strategies that CISOs can choose to design and implement IoT-centric cybersecurity posture:
Determine the attack surface area beyond IT and OT
Earlier security strategies were primarily focused on information technology (IT) management and security based on how and where enterprise data is accessed and used. However, today’s cybercriminal landscape is much more evolved and has become sophisticated, and demands enterprises shift their scope. Embracing IoT increases the attack surface area of the business network and has gone beyond traditional IT borders, and have infiltrated operational technology (OT) ecosystems such as automation tools integrated into the organization to gather data. Devices such as cameras, physical security access systems, occupancy sensors, and smart building automation do not have inherent cybersecurity capabilities.
Additionally, industries also embrace other OT devices like monitoring equipment, industrial machines, vibration sensors, or heat sensors which do not have inherent cybersecurity capabilities. These OT environments are a primary target of cybercriminals because they offer easy access to the business network. Many organizations do not have effective strategies, tools, and policies to secure and manage OT and IoT environments. It is crucial for organizations to determine the entire attack surface area and create a cybersecurity posture with no possible gaps for security breaches to occur.
Embrace a zero-trust approach
As the modern threat landscape evolves, it is crucial to onboard and manages new IoT devices that adapt to the business environment. SecOps teams need to secure end-to-end IoT devices right from the edge device integrated to execute the initial processing to the cloud that stores and analyzes the entire data.
Organizations that face challenges in managing and securing their IoT devices can adopt a zero-trust architecture approach.
It is one of the most efficient ways to secure the wide attack surface of IoT devices because zero trust architecture is based on the never trust, always verify principle. CISOs need to implement stringent governance policies to allow and deny access to sites, applications, or devices inside or outside the business network before allowing access.
Also Read: Tips to Strengthen Internet of Things (IoT) Cybersecurity
This means that organizations should not automatically trust any user who requests access to a site, app, or device inside or outside its perimeters; instead, the organization must verify anything and everything trying to connect to its systems before granting access. A zero-trust cybersecurity approach will enable businesses to secure their IT and OT environments. It can be a daunting task to protect complex OT environments. CISOs can isolate unpatched, outdated OT devices from other devices and assets as part of a zero-trust cybersecurity design strategy. Enterprises can keep their entire business network secure from potential cyberattacks with a zero-trust principle.
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