IoT security: Challenges and best practices for a hyperconnected world

Imagine waking up one morning to find your smart home turning against you. Your thermostat is cranked to extremes, your security cameras have gone dark and your smart fridge is placing orders you never approved. Outside, your electric vehicle suddenly flashes its headlights, blasts the radio at full volume and randomly locks and unlocks its doors — without anyone inside. It rolls slowly down the driveway, not by command but under someone else’s control.

This isn’t science fiction — it’s a plausible scenario in today’s hyperconnected world where the security of Internet of Things (IoT) devices is too often an afterthought.

The expanding attack surface

The IoT revolution is reshaping industries — from precision agriculture to autonomous vehicles, from remote healthcare to predictive maintenance in manufacturing. But this unprecedented proliferation has created an equally unprecedented attack surface. The sheer scale and heterogeneity of IoT ecosystems — spanning devices from multiple vendors, operating on divergent protocols and deployed across critical environments — make them an attractive and vulnerable target for attackers.