Communications Daily is a service of Warren Communications News.

Botnets Could Lead to 'Unmanageable' Cybersecurity Risk in IoT, Says Juniper

With an installed base of 15 billion IoT devices forecast by 2021, botnets could be an unmanageable cybersecurity risk, Juniper Research reported Monday. The use of botnets to disrupt internet services is a current threat and will be used for…

Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article

Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!

more malicious purposes, it said. Attacks such as the ones against Dyn in October (see 1610210056) can be seen as “proof of concepts,” said analyst Steffen Sorrell. “Medium-term, botnets will be used far more creatively -- not only to disrupt services, but also to create a distraction enabling multi-pronged attacks aimed at data theft or physical asset disruption.” Juniper urged IoT device manufacturers to implement security-by-design and said vendors such as Amazon, Google and Samsung should lead efforts to bring together other vendors to establish “security best-practices.” The market is “wide open for challenger cybersecurity vendors,” said the report, saying the industry needs to move beyond traditional signature-based detection methods to address IoT cybersecurity effectively.