DevOps in the Cloud

3 Ways IoT Developers Can Make Their Applications More Secure

When the IoT was still young, IoT application developers got away with making security an afterthought, as they built prototypes and minimum viable products designed to demonstrate the different ways the IoT could be used to transform the way we work, play and live. But the IoT has matured and grown to the point where today, Gartner estimates there were 8.4 billion connected things in 2017 and forecasts there will be 20.4 billion IoT devices deployed by 2020. With this growth has come a massive increase in number and sophistication of IoT security attacks, and the need for developers to make security not just a priority, but a top priority.

As the IoT hacks of Trendnet’s SecurView camera, St. Jude’s cardiac device and the Jeep Cherokee have demonstrated, when security is not a top priority, successful IoT attacks can cause significant real-world financial, reputational and even human damage.

While it is impossible to make IoT applications (or any type of software) 100% secure, there are several best practices that IoT application developers can adopt to strengthen the security of their IoT applications. These best practices include:

  1. Following a set of approved cryptographic standards when building applications.
  2. Using static code analysis programs that analyze application code to identify common coding mistakes that can lead to security vulnerabilities.
  3. Instituting a vulnerability management strategy that identifies and repairs known vulnerabilities in IoT applications on a scheduled, ongoing basis.

These three best practices will not make IoT applications perfectly protected from malicious actors. However, they can significantly reduce an IoT application’s vulnerabilities and attack surface, making it much less likely a developer’s applications will be breached, generating angry customers and negative headlines.

Follow Approved Cryptographic Standards

Most developers understand that, if they hope to keep IoT data safe, they should encrypt this data, especially while it is in transit from device to cloud or vice versa. Yet, faced with tight development deadlines, as well as the need to make the most of their IoT devices’ limited bandwidth and processing capabilities, some developers choose to not encrypt their data or use weak cryptographic algorithms that promise to be faster or more lightweight than others but do not provide proper levels of security.

Experience shows taking encryption shortcuts can result in customers’ data being stolen, an application disabled or other problems. For this reason, developers need to work closely with their security teams to encrypt IoT application data appropriately, following standards and guidelines approved by internationally recognized experts such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Choosing to use such approved standards does not have a major impact on IoT application development time, performance or functionality. NIST provides developers with guidelines on how to streamline integration of encryption standards into their applications. They also offer many different standards to choose from, so developers can find one that will provide their application with an appropriate level of security without sacrificing too much in terms of performance or functionality. Yes, it does require some additional work and effort, but if IoT developers want to make security a top priority, they need to make sure they are following approved cryptographic standards.

Use Static Code Analysis Programs

Many developers are familiar with static code analysis programs and their ability to discover common coding errors that can lead to bugs that affect software quality. However, these programs also can identify unsafe coding practices such as the use of improperly terminated strings, pointers to freed memory and buffer indexes allowed to go past the end of the buffer. These common coding mistakes create security vulnerabilities malicious actors can exploit in otherwise functional applications.

There are a variety of static code analysis tools available, both proprietary and open source that developers can use to alert them to coding errors that could create security vulnerabilities. Developers should research which ones best support their security and other code analysis needs, and then ensure that throughout the application development processes—and especially before deploying an application—they use these static code analysis programs to discover any coding errors that might lead to a security breach down the road.

Again, many developers might be tempted to skip this step, since the problems revealed by the program might prevent them from deploying and commercializing an otherwise functional application as fast as they would like. But, as the examples of IoT application hacks mentioned above demonstrate, cutting corners with security can often result in major problems down the road. If developers are dedicated to delivering their customers IoT applications with robust security, they need to commit themselves to using static code analysis programs to fix coding errors that might make their applications vulnerable to cyberattacks.

Monitor For and Repair Known Vulnerabilities

The media pays a lot of attention to so-called zero-day vulnerabilities—those that a software vendor has no prior knowledge about. However, the low-hanging fruit for most attackers is the ever-growing number of known vulnerabilities present in the millions of software components used in IoT applications that haven’t been fixed, either because the user of the component is unaware of the vulnerability or because they have not taken action to update their application to repair the vulnerability.

All IoT application developers should be aware of the known vulnerabilities their applications might have as result of incorporating third-party software components into their applications, be they open source components (such as a Linux operating systems and associated software) or proprietary components. However, keeping up to date on all the known vulnerabilities in an IoT application’s device firmware, operating system and other third-party software components is not simple. The enterprises that have built these software components, government agencies and other watchdogs often identify as many as 1,000 different vulnerabilities in these types of software components per month.

Fortunately, there are resources that can help developers stay up-to-date on new known vulnerabilities. For example, the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) is a public resource operated by NIST that catalogues known vulnerabilities in all types of software components, both proprietary and open source. To ensure their IoT applications do not have any known vulnerabilities, IoT developers can compile a security bill of materials (BOM) for their IoT application—a list of all the software components and versions used in the application—and then monitor the NVD for new known vulnerabilities with these components. Alternatively, there are a number of proprietary and open source tools that leverage free APIs to query the NVD database and then scan applications for vulnerabilities either by evaluating their components’ codebases or by discerning versions of exposed services (such as DNS, HTTP/S, NTP, SSH) on network interfaces.

However, simply being aware of known vulnerabilities does not fix those vulnerabilities. Which is why developers need to not just check for new known vulnerabilities on an ongoing basis, but also have a plan to regularly repair new known vulnerabilities with security updates. Ideally such a plan should allow these updates to be performed remotely (over the air) and automatically. Today, many consumer IoT applications already include an option to enable remote, automatic updates. The commercial IoT applications built by many developers sometimes need more coordination to enable such remote, automatic updates—but this should be the goal. In any event, even if the updates can’t be done remotely or automatically, it is essential that IoT developers have some sort of plan to deploy security updates for known vulnerabilities in their applications in a timely fashion.

Robust Security Will Enable Future Growth of IoT

IoT is at an important inflection point. The market continues to rapidly expand, with exciting new agricultural, supply chain, industrial, public safety, consumer and other IoT applications being launched every day. Yet, additional high-profile IoT application breaches could threaten the tentative level of trust businesses and consumers have placed in the IoT, especially as it increasingly is used to collect sensitive data or complete critical tasks.

To strengthen trust in IoT, developers need to dedicate themselves to making IoT security a top priority. Lip service is not enough–developers need to implement IoT security best practices, including the adoption of approved cryptographic standards, use of static code analysis programs to discover coding mistakes that can create security vulnerabilities and implementation of vulnerability management strategies that regularly identify and repair known vulnerabilities in their applications. If IoT developers make security a real top priority by implementing these and other IoT security best practices, the world’s trust in the IoT will grow and so will their business.

Larry LeBlanc

Larry LeBlanc

Larry is the Chief Engineer of Security at Sierra Wireless, a pioneer of IoT solutions for the enterprise. He has more than 25 years of experience in telecommunications network management and wireless communications industries. Prior to joining Sierra Wireless Larry co-founded and served as CTO of In Motion Technology, a vehicle-area network solutions provider for markets like public safety and utilities that was acquired by Sierra in 2014.

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