The Internet of Things...

Cruising the aisles of your favorite home improvement store, you spot it. Its tall, curvy profile is unmistakable, the glamorous shine of its polished chrome beckons you. The enormous touchscreen asks you if you’d like to order groceries — wait a second…

If you’ve been paying any attention at all, you know that smart home devices are popping up everywhere. From smart refrigerators like the Samsung Family Hub line to connected electric toothbrushes, you can get just about anything you want in a version that’ll report back to your smartphone or network. Heck, there’s even a connected water bottle!

Smart Home Devices and the Internet of Things

All those items that live in your house and report back to your smartphone or your hub or maybe even work with your voice assistant, when you consider them together, they make up a part of the Internet of Things. Everything connected to the Internet one way or the other that’s not a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone is part of the Internet of Things.

So, your swank SmartTV, your bluetooth-enabled dishwasher, that self-closing garage door, maybe even your security system, they’re all things that are part of the Internet of Things. It’s important to make this differentiation because unlike the other Internet, the Internet of Things has a big problem that is only just now emerging. Security has become a bit of an issue, with smart home devices turning into backdoors into home and business networks.

Older Internet of Things products are the most vulnerable, since it was uncommon for security to be considered in their design. After all, who’s going to hack a coffee maker? It’s not really the coffee pot that’s the end goal, as it turns out, it’s access. Access to a network that can be used against another entity, often without the owner’s knowledge at all. You could be happily percolating a pot of beans while your coffee pot is participating in a denial of service attack against AT&T and never be the wiser. It’s nefarious.

Is a Smart Home Worth the Risk?

Just because your smart home may be at risk right now doesn’t mean it’s not worth having. That would be just like saying your car is at risk of being hit in a parking lot, so you should never go to the market or maybe even never own a car. Smart home technology can improve and enrich lives when applied strategically, but that’s kind of the crux of the issue here. Having a bluetooth-enabled coffee pot is maybe not a strategic smart home item (but then again, maybe it is, you do you).

When you’re looking at smart home devices, there are a few things you should consider:

What is the brand’s commitment to security? If your product is designed to automatically accept new software when it’s available and allows you to change the password at your leisure, these are good signs that the manufacturer is trying to keep their Internet of Things products secure. Since these updates will be one of your primary defenses, they should be given a high level of consideration during a purchase.

Is this a product that should be connected? Sometimes, brands connect items that maybe don’t need to be connected, like that smart toothbrush, or maybe you don’t need them connected, like the smart coffee pot. It’s ok to not buy a connected item when you have a smart home. In fact, if you strategically purchase bluetooth connected items, you’ll minimize your security risk.

Can I secure this device? This may sound silly, but you should take security of these items very seriously. If you don’t feel that you’re capable of securing your new connected products, then arrange for a tech-savvy person to configure your Internet of Things network before you even turn that new buy on.

Tips for Better Internet of Things Security

So, you have that shiny new connected refrigerator and you’re ready to hook it up to the world. Before you do, it’s time to brush up your Internet of Things security! Here are some tips from us.

1. Set up a separate network for your Internet of Things devices. Known as network segmentation, having a separate, dedicated network for your devices will shield your computers and other more traditional hardware from any risk that your smart home could create. It’s always a good move to have a secondary network, anyway, then when visitors come you can give them the password to your guest network instead of your main network.

2. Always, always use a firewall and WPA2 wireless security with your router. Together, the two will give you extra layers of padding from the outside world. If a hacker does get through, it’s not for lack of armor on your side.

3. Use good passwords. A good password is one that doesn’t relate to you in any way, it’s not your birthday or your kid’s name or your dog’s anniversary. It’s numbers, letters, special characters arranged in some way that you can remember, but not so obvious that someone else could guess. Also, make sure you choose a different password for each device on your network. A password vault can help to keep track of all of these names and numbers, in case you ever need to use them again.

Wi-fi Security

Every morning, you ask your digital assistant for the news and weather while you’re getting ready for work. From there, you check the traffic with your smartphone, strap on your smartwatch, set some mood music for your pet for the day, have your digital assistant set your home’s thermostat to “away” mode and head out to the garage. You open your smart garage door before you realize you forgot to turn on your security system — but that’s not a problem, you have an app for that.

All of this technology touch seems perfectly normal these days. Absolutely everyone has a WiFi network at home to feed all of these neat tools that we collectively call the Internet of Things (IoT). Unfortunately, not everyone has a very secure WiFi network, which opens up IoT devices, computers and the network itself to attacks by nefarious types who would use them for tasks you probably didn’t have in mind.

Before you catch Alexa trying to order a DIY rocket kit from Acme without your authorization, let’s go through some basics of WiFi security to keep your home network and IoT devices protected.

Types of WiFI Security

There are basically four types of security you’ll find in a wireless router, some are much better at protecting you and your devices than others. As with anything to do with technology, the more modern protocols are going to be better at protecting you than older ones, so if your router is more than a couple of years old it might be time to consider an upgrade. Check this list to see if it has an appropriately secure protocol available first, though:

WEP. Wired Equivalent Privacy is a protocol reaching back to 1999. It was essentially the first wireless security type, so if this is the only option you’ve got available on your router, get yourself to Best Buy. This router cannot deal with modern challenges, bottom line. You might as well not have any internet security.

WPA. WiFi Protected Access was created in 2003 as a response to the many problems with WEP. A new security standard known as Temporal Key Integrity Protocol was developed that was much stronger than the encryption used with WEP, but it still used a similar implementation, so was problematic.

WPA2. WPA2 is an upgrade to WPA that was introduced in 2004. This upgraded version of WPA switched to a security protocol based on the US Government’s preferred choice of encryption known as the Advanced Encryption Standard. WPA2 is still the gold standard for home WiFi security, though older computers may not be able to utilize it. If your system or router is rated for 802.11g or less, you should consider an upgrade.

WPS. WiFi Protected Setup was supposed to make adding a device to a WPA2 network easier by granting people in physical proximity to the router the ability to just push a button and enter an 8-digit PIN to connect. Unfortunately, a well-known hack has been developed and distributed widely in the recent past, turning WPS into a very vulnerable convenience.

As of the writing of this article, most experts recommend that your router be secured using WPA2 with WPS disabled. This combination will give you the most bang for your security buck, keeping as many problems at bay as is possible with WiFi security protocols alone.

More Ways to Secure Your Network

Using the right security protocol is just the first step to protecting your WiFi network. There are lots of practical ways to keep yourself safe, too. Here are a few of our favorites:

1. Change the name of your router. Your router came with a unique name called the Service Set Identifier (SSID). It might be random numbers and letters, or it might be something more readable like “Bob’s Network.” Your job is to name it something that doesn’t give away your location, but is also memorable so you know which network is yours. For example, if you’re a DC comic fan, you might name yours “SpiderLan.”

2. Also, change that router password. Never leave the default password on your router, especially if that password is blank! All anyone would need to do to access the settings is park close to your house and point their phone at it, then you’re in big trouble. Again, choose a password that’s secure, but memorable. Use numbers, letters and special characters. Short sentences can be good if you’ve got a poor memory, “N33d_M0ar_B33s!” is a surprisingly secure choice.

3. Remember to check for updates to your router’s software. Occasionally, your router’s manufacturer will push updates to the software that controls your hardware. Update this device as often as possible, it’ll give you the best security available.

4. Setup a secondary network. A lot of modern routers allow for a secondary network with a different SSID and password than the main network. This is a great way to give guests access to your network without compromising your data, as well as the ideal solution to IoT devices that may be less secure. When Alexa is on her own network, hackers can’t ask her how much money is in your bank account or where the nearest ATM for your bank is located.

5. Remember, no one is giving away free money. Last, but not least, remember that Nigerian princes and foreign lotteries just begging to give you cash are, sadly, just dreams we all wish were true. Get to know what scammy emails look like, never click on email attachments that seem a little weird and always ask yourself “Do I know this person and would they send me a thing like this?” You can lock your network down as hard as you want, but if you let a hacker in your front door, all your effort will be for nothing.

Secure Your WiFi Network to Protect Your Smart Home

There’s no feeling like knowing you’re doing all you can to keep your home safe. After all, you’d never post a giant sign saying “thieves, there’s gold in here!” and then leave your front door unlocked. Your smart home is no different when it comes to digital criminals. There’s lots of valuable data to be had that could result in identity theft, or even old-fashioned theft, so the stakes are quite high.

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Steve, Jack, & Kylie