Network World

The IoT era has arrived.

Here's some proof: 83% of organizations say the Internet of Things (IoT) is important to business today, and 92% say it will be in two years.

That's according to a recent DigiCert survey conducted by ReRez Research of 700 organizations in five countries to better understand the IoT and IoT security.

Anecdotally, I always find that markets have matured when it’s no longer an unusual thing. For example, a few years ago, it was hard to find IoT deployments that were outside of the traditional machine-to-machine industries such as manufacturing and oil and gas. Today, connected things are everywhere. Case in point: I recently interviewed the IT director at an entertainment venue and he walked me through all the connected things without ever saying “IoT.” The organization was connecting more things to improve customer experience, and it was treated as no big deal.

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Earlier this week, German carmaker Volkswagen announced an upgrade to its VW Car-Net mobile app that lets iPhone users control their Golfs and Jettas using Siri commands. Specifically, iPhone users on iOS 12 can say, “Hey, Siri” to lock and unlock the car, check estimated range remain, flash the warning lights, and toot the horn. You can also add Shortcuts to Siri with personalized phrases to start/stop charging, defrosting, and climate controls; set the temperature; and even ask, “Where is my car?”

Woo-hoo, pretty exciting right? Not in most cases, actually, but the announcement got me thinking about the limits and perils of voice commands in automotive applications.

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Everyone lives on the internet, period. Whether you’re streaming a standup special on Netflix, answering emails from your boss, chatting on Tinder, or completing everyday errands like paying bills online, you’re likely spending most of your day tangled up in the world wide web.

Unfortunately, that makes you a high-risk candidate for a cyber attack at some point along the way, be it through malware, phishing, or hacking. Best-case scenario, it sucks up your time to fix (or your money by paying someone else to fix it). Worst case scenario, it puts you and your computer out of commission for days and damages your files beyond repair. Not to mention the sheer terror of knowing some hacker has complete and total access to virtually everything about you, including all of your banking and credit card information. Malwarebytes is a free program built to help you avoid the above scenarios altogether — and it makes traditional antivirus look old, tired, and played out (seriously it’s free, download it here).

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Computer scientists at the University of California at Riverside have found that GPUs are vulnerable to side-channel attacks, the same kinds of exploits that have impacted Intel and AMD CPUs.

Two professors and two students, one a computer science doctoral student and a post-doctoral researcher, reverse-engineered a Nvidia GPU to demonstrate three attacks on both graphics and computational stacks, as well as across them. The researchers believe these are the first reported side-channel attacks on GPUs.

[ Read also: What are the Meltdown and Spectre exploits? | Get regularly scheduled insights: Sign up for Network World newsletters ]

A side-channel attack is one where the attacker uses how a technology operates, in this case a GPU, rather than a bug or flaw in the code. It takes advantage of how the processor is designed and exploits it in ways the designers hadn’t thought of.

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iDrive has activated a significant discount on their Remote access software RemotePC in these days leading into Black Friday. RemotePC by iDrive is a full-featured remote access solution that lets you connect to your work, home or office computer securely from anywhere, and from any iOS or Android device. Right now, their 50 computer package is 90% off or just $6.95 for your 1st year. If you've been thinking about remote access solutions, now is a good time to consider RemotePC. Learn more about it here.

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Despite the goal of keeping Web communications private, flaws in the design and implementation of Transport Layer Security have led to breaches, but the latest version – TLS 1.3 – is an overhaul that strengthens and streamlines the crypto protocol.

What is TLS?

TLS is a cryptographic protocol that provides end-to-end communications security over networks and is widely used for internet communications and online transactions. It is an IETF standard intended to prevent eavesdropping, tampering and message forgery. Common applications that employ TLS include Web browsers, instant messaging, e-mail and voice over IP.

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The Wi-Fi Alliance has introduced the first major security improvement to Wi-Fi in about 14 years: WPA3. The most significant additions to the new security protocol are greater protection for simple passwords, individualized encryption for personal and open networks, and even more secure encryption for enterprise networks.

The original Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) standard was released back in 2003 to replace WEP, and the second edition of WPA came the year after. The third edition of WPA is a long-awaited and much-welcomed update that will benefit Wi-Fi industry, businesses, and the millions of average Wi-Fi users around the world—even though they might not know it.

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A firewall is a network device that monitors packets going in and out of networks and blocks or allows them according to rules that have been set up to define what traffic is permissible and what traffic isn’t.

There are several types of firewalls that have developed over the years, becoming progressively more complex over time and taking more parameters into consideration when determining whether traffic should or should not be allowed to pass. The most modern are commonly known as next-generation firewalls (NGF) and incorporate many other technologies beyond packet filtering.

[ Also see What to consider when deploying a next generation firewall. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ]

Initially placed at the boundaries between trusted and untrusted networks, firewalls are now also deployed to protect internal segments of networks, such as data centers, from other segments of organizations’ networks.

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Last week, the tech press made a big deal out of a ruling by the Librarian of Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office to allow consumers to break vendors’ digital rights management (DRM) schemes in order to fix their own smartphones and digital voice assistants. According to The Washington Post, for example, the ruling — which goes into effect Oct. 28 — was a big win for consumer right-to-repair advocates. 

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You know you need to protect your company from unauthorized or unwanted access. You need a network-security tool that examines the flow of packets in and out of the enterprise, governed by rules that decide whether that flow is safe, malicious or questionable and in need of inspection. You need a firewall.

Recognizing that you need a firewall is the first – and most obvious -- step. The next crucial step in the decision-making process is determining which firewall features and policies best-suit your company’s needs.

Today’s enterprise firewalls must be able to secure an increasingly complex network that includes traditional on-premises data center deployments, remote offices and a range of cloud environments. Then you have to implement and test the firewall once it's installed. Perhaps the only element more complex than configuring, testing and managing a next-generation firewall is the decision-making process regarding which product to trust with your enterprise security.

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(Insider Story)