IoT Achilles Heels

Ancient Greece brought to life many metaphors and comparisons to our language as well as various set expressions. The term Achilles Heel is used to some particular weak spot something or somebody might have because according to the Greek legend Achille was a strong man who got the prophecy in the childhood to die quite young because of the wound. To prevent this, his mother took a baby and dipped him into the waters of a holy river to protect the future young man. All his body became protected except the heel his mother was holding him to merge into water. So, this particular heel caused his death because he was wounded there. If we take the term and apply it to the IoT technology, it will indicate the weakest spot in the whole concept of the Internet of Things. Apart from that, the post also tends to answer the questions concerning IoT generally.

What is the Internet of Things

We could define the Internet of Things as the connection of machines, vehicles, buildings or any other IoT devices with inbuilt sensors, electronics, actuators, and software, all wired through the Internet. Through the mentioned above connectivity, they gather and exchange data. Some other resources could define the IoT as ‘the infrastructure of information society’.

IoT technology allows gadgets be controlled or sensed remotely through the Internet, thus giving an opportunity to integrate the physical world of things into the computer-based one hoping that this will enhance accuracy and efficiency as well as bring the economic benefit to whoever is using it.

The Internet of Things sensors allow the technologies become emerged into the cyber-physical systems and could be subdivided into several main domains:

– intelligent transportation;

– smart homes;

– smart cities;

– smart grids, etc.

The Internet of Things examples

According to the predictions, there could have been almost 20.8 billion IoT devices worldwide by 2020.

IoT technology could be also widely used in medicine industry: organ monitoring implants, biochip transponders on cattle or other domestic animals, electric sensors in coastal waters; automobile sphere: built-in sensors, DNA devices for food and environmental monitoring. IoT technology could be also used in rescue and search operations and the so-called ‘home automation’: control of lighting, ventilation, heating, air conditioning and appliances like refrigerators, washing machines, dryers, etc.

One of the very progressive fields of IoT application is the creation of the intelligent shopping systems. User’s purchasing habits could be traced through the mobile phone and be saved in the cloud. Thus, the users will always be provided with the special offers from his favorite shopping destinations on the products they buy the most.

Some additional Internet of Things’ examples reflect dealing with heat, energy management, and electricity. With the help of IoT people could control the electrical devices around the house while you are still in the office finishing some papers or doing some other stuff. It is all possible due to the IoT devices connected to the Internet.

However, the usage of these gadgets are applied only to some areas, it cannot work anywhere you want.

IoT Achilles Heel

Now, finally, after having given some ideas about what is the Internet of Things we could come up to going through its weakest spot. What are the factors that could make IoT insecure?

It’s API management. API management tool originated over 15 years ago. To provide scalable environment one should take into consideration security, logging, and auditing, etc.

What is happening nowadays is almost 10 million API calls originating every day with the number of over 100 calls per second. If the growth of a number of calls provided, security breaches could originate due to the overloaded traffic.

To make sure that your API performance isn’t weak, please, evaluate the API tool and make sure it’s working perfectly in risky situations with overloaded traffic and the possible downfalls in the future are not forthcoming.