IoT systems are growing at an unpresented rate. Gartner, Inc. forecasts that the enterprise and automotive Internet of Things (IoT) market will grow to 5.8 billion endpoints by 2020. This is a 21% increase from 2019, and this exclude the domestic market such as has smart metering, building automation. Environmental sensors monitoring connected lighting environment monitoring will take the node count to over 10 billion.

IoT systems have many uses and while there are competing technologies such as SigFox™, LoRaWAN™ or NB-IoT™. There are many common aspects in the needs for IoT systems.  IoT technology is expected to have a long hype cycle. Notwithstanding it’s clear that with billons of electronic devices that need to communicate to central infrastructure. The systems need to be low cost, and updateable, with a long life (10 years +). Hence compromises are taken in the design or implementation.  We have the potential ideal environment for security breach and fraud. Manipulation of the nodes gateways and sensors to alter the perceived environment is a significant risk.

IoT companies often say that the systems are secure. “We use AES encryptions, so all communication is safe” It’s not!

We all know that Security gets old. Look at how often you update your computer or phone. Even with this they still have attacks and billions $ are lost yearly to fraud worldwide. Just thinks of the opportunities when we are not the individual at the end monitoring the device unlike the devices today.