Editor’s Note: The use of consensus and consortia standards in federal regulatory and procurement activities is government by OMB Circular A-119. See, An Updated Look at the Federal Policies Governing How Agencies Use Voluntary Consensus Standards in Regulatory, Procurement, and Science Documents.
From: SIGNAL
By Sandra Jontz
Experts call for uniform standards to reduce the vulnerabilities of smart technology.
Yet a pervasive mindset exists within both the private and public sectors that the lack of a mandate for standards means there is little need to spend money or time on security, Stevens says. “I don’t know why that is. If you think about it, a mobile device probably has more personal information on it than any other device you use. You use it more often, and you take it everywhere you go. I can track where you’ve been for the last 48 hours because you have lots of applications on your device to tell me that,” he says.
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There is good reason to fear the doomsday scenario that could stem from the explosion in IoT use, Stevens says. Most agencies think mobile device managers (MDMs) secure the IoT environment. “But mobile device managers don’t have an agent on the device that is continuously monitoring the applications and ensuring that they are safe. If you have Google Maps on your device, [the company] pushes updates to that all the time. But an MDM doesn’t evaluate the update to ensure that it’s safe. If you have an agent like Lookout on the device, then we analyze that application after it’s been downloaded, and we tell you within seconds whether it’s safe or if it represents a risk,” he says.
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