Recent research carried out by a Dutch Software firm named Irdeto claims that cyber attacks on the Internet of Things (IoT) are causing a £ 1billion loss to UK Economy. The software company estimates that the economy of the United Kingdom suffers over $244,000 loss on an average every year with malware attacks and data breaches standing as common.
As most of the smart devices are being provided with weak security measures, it’s being treated as a “low hanging fruit” by hackers. Insecure apps deteriorate the severity on the threat scale. And if left unattended, then the cyber threat can pose as a serious financial threat to the entire UK economy within no time.
“As the technology of Internet of things is evolving, so are the companies coming up with related products. But the issue is to address the issue with improved security measures”, said Steve Huin, Vice President, Irdeto.
Huin added that more than half of respondents who participated in the company survey responded that they experienced an outage due to an IoT related attack in the past 18 months.
Healthcare, Transport, and manufacturing happen to be the most vulnerable to such attacks say the Irdeto survey.
Taking the initiative, the UK government has formulated certain directives to the manufacturers of IoT to have their products labeled with security guarantees-giving clear indication that all security measures are available on their devices on a default note.
Pretty soon, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport will also host a public consultation with business leaders and security analysts as a part of ‘Secure by Design’ Initiative where vendors have to give assurance that their IoT devices are safe from the hacking techniques prevailing in the current cyber landscape.
