Smart Homes, the Internet of Things, and Ambient Surveillance

IoT - the Internet of Things and how it relates to home network security.

Increasingly, the 'things' that surround us are internet-connected. They're aware, "smart," connected, and function as life-monitors continuously observing activities and collecting personal information.

Fifty to a hundred billion things will be connected and monitoring by 2021. Many of them embedded in our personal lives and private environments. The result is a state of ambient surveillance, the antithesis to privacy.

Personal Devices & Private Environments

Sadly, but predictably, unfettered access to surveillance-level streams of private activities and personal information can quickly and easily turn very bad. 

Each internet-connected device, or 'thing', is attached by cable or Wi-Fi to a router. This "local network" makes up your private environment. The router connects the local network to a modem, which connects to the internet. If a hacker can get on an IoT device, it can access the local network and "own" its activities. 

The information streaming from your personal network is sought after by many. Cybercriminals, state-sponsored hackers, Big Tech, Big Government, the creep down the street, and bad guys from around the world; they all want the information they can get from watching your network. 

Increasingly, they're using 'things' to do it.

Protecting Home Networks and Devices

The best way to protect a local network and all connected 'things' is by putting a "gate" between the modem and the router. A 'smart' gate that does two things very well:

1. Prevents the bad from getting in the local network.
2. Anonymizes everything that goes out of the local network.

A smart-gate between the internet and a local network is informed in real-time and makes decisions at wire-speed. It protects and defends by:

• Stopping malware at the gateway
• Informing the firewall in real-time
• Credentialing, profiling, and sandboxing incoming traffic
• Utilizing multiple kill-chains for ransomware
• Monitoring and blocking suspicious activity
• and much more utilizing collaborative intelligence, machine-learning, and AI.

Traffic on the way out of the local network and on to the internet is anonymized by the same smart-gate using VPN Transmission Security – end-to-end tunnel security with military-grade encryption for complete privacy. Including cameras, TVs, doorbells, thermostats, and everything else streaming from the Internet of Things.

This is what our Managed Network Security service does. If you'd like to learn more about how we use advanced science and intelligence to protect home and home office networks, contact us here: