Security Threats to Your Smart Home

Effective Measures to Counter Threats

By 2025, nearly a quarter of the world’s over two billion households will occupy smart homes, while a third will be broadband service provider subscribers. The number of connected devices for electronics, house controls, and utilities will reach nearly five billion. While this connected world will usher in increased convenience and automation across home ecosystems, it will also greatly expand the attack surface for cybersecurity hackers and criminals.

The first step toward a solution is to better understand where and how attacks are deployed. This report characterizes threats at a high level and offers solutions. The threat areas examined include the following:

• Hackers entering the home network through smart thermostats, consumer electronics, lighting, and utility devices
• The limitations of currently available physical safety and security devices to address the cybersecurity environment
• The major threat of staged lateral attacks, in which a hacker breaks in through one device to gain access to a network and ultimately the home gateway or router, which opens access to other connected devices that store user identities and financial information

While there is no silver bullet against these threats, combining the best physical, PC, and mobile device and home network security can significantly increase a smart home’s level of protection. Home network solutions offer a good combination of threat detection and monitoring, as well as measures to shut down devices or network segments when an attack is discovered.