‘Tis the season to spend lavishly on gifts for
friends and family, and no doubt many of the year’s hottest
purchases will include so-called “smart”
devices or ‘internet of things”-enabled products
including toys, drones,
robots, wearables, fitness trackers, gaming systems,
smart everything (home gadgets, TVs, watches, pet
feeders, thermostats, crock pots, headphones) and the
like.
While connected devices offer many benefits to consumers, the
downside of these internet of things
(IoT) purchases is that many such devices carry
security vulnerabilities. Even as they collect and
analyze tremendous amounts of consumer data (and personal
information), connected devices have traditionally
had notoriously lax security
standards, possessing wide open default settings,
limited to no security protocols or secure update mechanisms,
non-universal IoT security standards, weak,
easily guessable, or hard-coded passwords and
un-patchable firmware/operating systems and
