IoT dangers demand a dedicated group

The internet of things (IoT) brings with it a wide range of IT security headaches, along with compliance nightmares — and turf wars.

Internal problem No. 1: Departments that typically have little to no interactions with IT are now directly ordering corporate IoT devices. Maybe you’ve got Facilities purchasing IoT door locks or Maintenance buying a ton of IoT light bulbs. Given that those departments have been purchasing door locks and light bulbs for as long as anyone can remember and have never needed IT or security’s signoff, this can be a problem.

Internal problem No. 2: In many ways, IoT devices (think of devices for tracking pallets on ships or for monitoring where every fleet car is and how fast it’s been driven) are very different from anything else that IT or security has dealt with. The units are capturing data that has never been tracked before — Hello, Compliance. Go away, GDPR regulator — and in different ways, such as bypassing enterprise LANs and cloud networks and using internal antennas to directly communicate.

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