The pervasive impact of Internet of Things (IoT) devices on our lives is greater than that of traditional IT devices. There are several unknowns in IoT security, and it raises concerns for customers who are looking to incorporate IoT devices in their existing infrastructure. Fortunately, security by design can resolve some of the major root causes of the underlying vulnerabilities in these connected devices.

The COVID-19 Pandemic has enabled contactless payment volumes to increase quicker than previously projected. According to Juniper research, contactless payments will triple to $6 trillion worldwide by 2024, up from about $2 trillion in 2020, as the amount of mobile wallet transactions increase and banks expand the use of contactless cards.

In June 2020, a knife attack at a kindergarten in China injured 39 people, many of them children. The perpetrator was a security guard at the school. This was an insider attack and a horrific act that happens far too often across the world. While the majority of the cybersecurity industry is focused on securing data, the growing convergence of digital and physical security remains unhinged.

Just like how computers use trusted third parties and chains of trust to connect with one another, organizations use (admittedly much slower and more human powered) authoritative standards organizations (AICPA) and certified audit firms to create a trust system between organizations.

Vulnerabilities are weaknesses leveraged by adversaries to compromise the confidentiality, availability or integrity of a resource. The vulnerability ecosystem has matured considerably in the last few years. A significant amount of effort has been invested to capture, curate, taxonomize and communicate the vulnerabilities in terms of severity, impact and complexity of the associated exploit or attack.

The audience in the room is weirdly quiet. The contestant is in a small plexiglass booth with nothing but a phone, a laptop computer and some notes. On a set of speakers outside, the booth broadcasts the sounds of a dial tone as a woman on the stage begins to dial a number. It is apparent she is not phoning a friend. The dial tone changes to a ring tone, and moments later, the other end picks up. “Hello… IT department.