The Internet of Things encompasses connected sensor systems, smart grids, building automation systems, vehicle to vehicle communication systems and wearable computing devices.

This connectivity opens up a variety of use cases from greater efficiency, greater safety, greater capabilities to greater insights. A  dominant theme is the ability to gather more data for powerful analytics and predictive intelligence.

The risk however with greater connectivty, is that  these systems are remotely attackable over the network. They may be running old unpatched systems, have fixed or simple passwords, be deployed with potentially insufficient safety controls or allow data to be leaked out that can be misused in unexpected ways.

The task to secure this connected device ecosystem is an ongoing concern as the systems gain in complexity and in breadth of deployment.

IoT Security is the field of anticipating attacks, architecting, designing, deploying and operationally maintaining the security of the Internet of Things.