When it comes to protecting against Internet of Things (IoT)-based threats, many organizations seem have a lot more to deal with than just the officially sanctioned Internet-connected devices on their networks.
A new analysis by Zscaler of IoT traffic exiting enterprise networks showed a high volume associated with consumer IoT products, including TV set-top boxes, IP cameras, smart watches, smart refrigerators, connected furniture, and automotive multimedia systems.
In some cases, the traffic was generated by employees at work, for instance, checking their nanny cams or accessing media devices or their home security systems over the corporate network. In another instances, consumer-grade IoT devices installed in work facilities, such as smart TVs, generated a lot of the IoT traffic.
Though all IoT devices — authorized and unauthorized — that Zscaler observed used at least some level of encryption, a startling 83% of IoT transactions were happening over plain-text channels, making it vulnerable to eavesdropping, sniffing, and man-in-the-middle attacks.
"We are noticing a big increase in IoT device traffic aggressing the enterprise network," says Deepen Desai, vice president of security research at Zscaler.
As recently as last May, the volume of IoT traffic generated by Zscaler's enterprise customer base was in the range of 56 million transactions per month. Currently it is around 33 million transactions a day, or roughly 1 billion transactions per month. As a proportion of all Internet transactions that Zscaler processes, the volume of IoT-related traffic is still relatively small but is growing very fast, Zscaler said.
While the traffic increase itself is in ke ..
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