At Blackberry’s annual analyst event in April, CEO John Chen shared the complicated future his company foresees; a society of driverless vehicles zipping around the streets of smart cities, all equipped with cameras, sensors and huge data lakes of information, sharing knowledge to enhance safety. Now, imagine if some hostile actor was able to take control of any number of these sensors. As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to evolve, Blackberry’s solution is to establish a ‘zero trust network’ for connected devices that makes use of the data, provides a comprehensive way to secure devices and the data coming from them (both in-transit and at rest), and aggressively protects autonomous things that use the data from being compromised by nefarious parties. The effort to secure a solution for IoT is arguably more important than the effort to create it. Why? Because, while security cameras on cars, buildings and at intersections can forecast and alert IoT devices, if for example a child runs toward the street, evildoers could just as easily infiltrate and hijack any number of these sensors, forcing vehicles into unsafe areas, causing them to slow, and rather than avoid a carjacker, serve one up to them. The ‘zero trust network’ has a lot of work to do, as it will have to anticipate absolute worst-case scenarios in order to secure the integrity of IoT best outcomes, in an intricately connected and complex world.
