Can smart home devices compromise your security?

February 7, 2020

Smart homes are all the rage, nearly everyone as some sort of smart device in their house. Whether it's a smart fridge, Amazon Alexa, Google home, or Phillips smart bulbs. Even people who aren’t tech savvy are on board with these smart devices that make our lives so easy.

Remember when you came home to an empty house late at night and had to hunt for a light switch? Smart home devices changed that, now you just have to say “Alexa turn on house” and suddenly you have light. But with all the benefits they provide there has to be a downside right? Right, they aren’t as secure as you think they are.

Checkpoint and Phillips recently came out to discuss a collaboration where they tested out how secure their products were against hackers. The answer? Not very. Hackers are able to take control of a bulb from a fair distance away and either knock it off the network or mess with the bulbs brightness. This leads the consumer into thinking that something is wrong with the bulb, so they delete it from their network and rediscover it in hopes of fixing the issue

But the issue with that is that a hacker could infect the control bridge with malware and infect the network it is connected to. From there it’s only a matter of time before all the devices on the network are infected and you start seeing issues with your accounts.

So how can this be avoided?

Phillips is a major brand, and with the discovery of this weakness they have already started putting in measures to make their products more secure. But there are hundreds of cheaper duplicates on the market that may be more affordable, but won’t have the same urge to make secure products. You don’t necessarily need to ditch these more affordable options, but you do need to protect yourself.

You can do this by making sure all of your smart home devices are on a separate network from the ones you connect your personal and business devices to. You should also have a network firewall in order to keep out any nasty malware that might creep in.

With technology constantly advancing it’s important to constantly be vigilant for ways that hackers can exploit weaknesses. Not only with your business but also at home. Because while a business may seem like the preferred target for these criminals they know that regular people are less informed of the dangers. Meaning they will be easy to compromise then they’ll have all of your info for a lot less effort.

Keep yourself protected by staying up to date with the latest news, and trends in cyber security. Or by speaking with your IT specialists to discuss how you can increase security and protect yourself from cyber attacks.