Internet of Things (IoT) devices include wearables, smart home appliances, smart city systems, self-driving cars, automated retail checkouts, and other smart devices for home and business use. Cybercriminals infect smart devices to conduct attacks or as a proxy for other types of malicious actions. In 2023 IoT devices in the Middle East, Turkiye and Africa region were responsible for over 8 million outgoing attacks that were spotted on Kaspersky honeypots¹. To make smart devices around the world more protected, Kaspersky at its Cyber Security Weekend – META event announced plans for signing a strategic partnership agreement with Favoriot, a regional innovator in IoT platforms.
IoT devices are connected with business applications and cloud platforms through business applications. Kaspersky IoT Secure Gateway 1000 (KISG 1000) ensures the security of these interactions due to the Cyber Immune operating system – KasperskyOS – at its core. With KISG 1000, the entire IoT system of an organisation is protected at the gateway level due to Kaspersky’s secure-by-design approach and built-in protection capabilities.
“Given the diversity of IoT devices and the related cybersecurity risks, the need for their protection is clear. Traditional measures may not be sufficient for IoT protection, hence specialised security solutions should be implemented,” comments Dr. Mazlan Abbas, CEO of Favoriot. “Favoriot is an innovator in IoT integration, and at the Cyber Security Weekend in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, we are proud to announce a strategic partnership that is planned to be signed between Favoriot and Kaspersky later in the year. This partnership will see our companies focus on jointly developing the Favoriot IoT platform and Kaspersky’s Cyber Immune IoT Gateway to provide for a safer tomorrow.”
Victor Ivanovsky, KasperskyOS Business Development Lead, added: “Kaspersky Cyber Immunity helps organisations operating across multiple industries, such as smart city systems, manufacturing, energy production or others, to get a secure IoT system and visibility across all connected devices. Customers can fully protect their IoT suite, from the gateway to the cloud, and manage it through one centralised administration console. We are happy that together with Favoriot we will be able to bring next-gen cyber protection to more organisations – in the SEA, META regions, and worldwide.”
To keep an organisation’s IoT suite safe, Kaspersky recommends:
· Change the factory passwords at initial setup, use complex passwords at least 8 characters long, including upper and lower-case letters, numerals, and special characters.
· Use a strict access policy, network segmentation and a zero-trust model. This will help to minimise the spread of an attack and protect the most sensitive parts of the infrastructure.
· Check the IoT Security Maturity Model – an approach that helps companies evaluate all steps and levels they need to pass to achieve a sufficient level of IoT protection.
· Use a dedicated IoT gateway that ensures the inbuilt security and reliability of data transferring, like KISG 1000.
· Use Kaspersky Threat Intelligence as reference to block network connections originating from malicious network addresses detected by security researchers.
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¹ A honeypot is decoy devices used to attract the attention of cybercriminals and analyze their activities.
