Do you know what IoT stands for? IoT is the Internet of Things. It allows organizations and individuals to interconnect their home and business devices through a cloud (Internet) based service. Tech talk has been consistent since the beginning of time with its never ending stream of acronyms. If you’re like me you might find it a bit of a put-on. I guess originally tech speak was intended to make things sound important, technical, and beyond the average person. Today not surprisingly most industries have their own acronyms.
Back in the mainframe days of the 1980s there were FEPs, Front End Processors; DASD, Direct-Access Storage Devices; and computing power was measured in MIPS, Million Instructions Per Second. Transmission lines were measured in KBPS, kilobits per second and there was no Internet yet. Computing resources and data storage devices were guarded by physical security such as, guards, video surveillance, card readers, as well as key locks. Companies that had multiple geographic locations and could justify the cost had point-to-point transmission lines providing remote access to mainframes and other computing platforms. Many times the remote terminals were kept in secured rooms that only authorized users could access. Security in general was simplified and data breaches far less common and certainly not headline news.
Today we live in a data intensive age where digital transactions build our digital footprint and influence how we are marketed to online. The average home today has greater processing power, data storage and global broadband access than many large corporate entities maintained in the early 1980s. Physical security controls while still important today have been augmented with a large array of technologies to monitor and manage information security at a physical, connectivity, application, and transaction level.
Cloud computing has become a serious alternative to multi-million dollar corporate investments, long timeframes and large support staffs providing pay-as-you-go pricing and the ability to scale globally on a near immediate timeframe. Millions of businesses use some form of cloud computing including startups, government agencies and the largest enterprises.
Amazon’s IoT Core has millions of customers and can connect billions of devices and process trillions of messages globally. Cloud computing is an incredible leap forward in computing technology in terms of its global reach, processing, scalability, and availability. While the technology is mind blowing there are still noteworthy security risks and downsides that are not addressed by simply implementing a cloud based infrastructure.
The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property estimated in April 2018 the annual costs from the loss of intellectual property ranged from $225 billion to $600 billion. These costs are projected to rise to $6 Trillion worldwide by 2021. While there are many ways that thefts occur, including social engineering, technology transfer, hacking, the point is that there are risks regardless of how you run your business and that implementing a cloud based infrastructure is not a cure all.
Whether you are a small or large business securing end-point devices such as office computers, terminals, usernames/passwords, remote access devices, networking infrastructure and properly training employees to be able to identify potential fraudulent activity is critical. End-point devices need to be maintained though ongoing backups, updates and other processes. Finally if you are breached you need to be able to detect malicious activity and eliminate it in the shortest timeframe possible. Many of the largest breaches go on undetected for years leading to serious losses and business consequences.
Network Management Solutions has been helping small to medium sized businesses, along with some large global organizations adapt to the ongoing changes in networking and computing technology since 1996. Contact us for a free, confidential consultation. We can be reached at 908-451-1821.
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