Smart products are part of the issue, and smart products that fail in dumb ways are a really big part of the issue.
Any smart product, pretty much by definition, has to have a computer in it. Anything with a computer in it can be hacked. There’s really no good reason that your bed should have an attack surface.
If you are going to have smarts in something, it really needs to fail well. Like, for a bed, it should have something that bypasses the smarts and lets it go back to “dumb bed” mode no matter what. No matter what position it’s in, it should be possible to make it go flat even if you have no Internet connection. In fact, even if the smart parts are not working at all, there should be a way to make it go flat, even if that’s a purely mechanical system that allows you to bypass the motors.
The easiest way to implement this is to avoid the IoT entirely. I strive to avoid any smart products that cannot be perpetually used offline (a.k.a. most of them).
Smart products are part of the issue, and smart products that fail in dumb ways are a really big part of the issue.
Any smart product, pretty much by definition, has to have a computer in it. Anything with a computer in it can be hacked. There’s really no good reason that your bed should have an attack surface.
If you are going to have smarts in something, it really needs to fail well. Like, for a bed, it should have something that bypasses the smarts and lets it go back to “dumb bed” mode no matter what. No matter what position it’s in, it should be possible to make it go flat even if you have no Internet connection. In fact, even if the smart parts are not working at all, there should be a way to make it go flat, even if that’s a purely mechanical system that allows you to bypass the motors.
The easiest way to implement this is to avoid the IoT entirely. I strive to avoid any smart products that cannot be perpetually used offline (a.k.a. most of them).
It’s true, and there’s nothing IoT that is absolutely essential. But, if they were secure and safe, there are a lot of IoT things I’d like to have.