It’s all the rage now: you speak out loud to the internet connected device in your home and poof! An Uber/Lyft car appears at your doorstep. Pretty great and a huge timesaver, right? Or you’ve seen that commercial where the husband on the beach chair locks his SUV from one thousand miles away. Wow, problem averted, right? Well, not so fast.

All your internet connected devices are huge convenience for you and a potential huge opportunity for a hacker. The potential for threat is obvious enough that a movie or two has already been produced showing what could become possible. So does life imitate art or does art imitate life?

“But I love my __(You fill in the blank)__,” I can hear you bemoaning. Not to worry; here’s what to do:

• Get some education. (Okay, you’ve started that because you are reading this. Check!)
• Verify you have a router with a firewall built-in and make sure it has a DMZ capability. More about that later…
• Put those internet-compatible (IoT) devices on the DMZ zone
• If this sounds daunting, hire a Security/IT professional to do this for you. Don’t go cheap on your security!
• Come back here often to read up because this is evolving daily.

Now the details: This is an oversimplification to be sure. There is a lot more to a DMZ and how it protects your home/business network. There are other more significant threats out there today but we have to stay alert. IoT is all the rage today and shows no signs of diminishing. As sophistication increases, devices will build more security into them. Be certain of this: if someone promises you a secured device and won’t put any financial assurances behind those promises, it may be possible they are more concerned with speed to market at the expense of security considerations. We recommend you contact your IT person with any questions you may have, or call the North Chamber so we can redirect you to a member who specializes in this specialty. You wouldn’t go to your eye doctor if your feet were bothering you, right? Get a specialist!