Interconnected Of Things - The Fastest Growing Electronic Attack Surface

Interconnected of Things – The Fastest Growing Electronic Attack Surface Significant effort has been devoted to protecting critical national security assets from physical, cyber, and operational threats. But a new threat is quickly emerging that hasn’t garnered a lot of attention yet, the Interconnected of Things. Much like the Internet of Things (IoT), it is defined by the interconnected nature of a multitude of devices. However, these devices don’t need the internet to communicate, rather just an active connection to a network. In 2014-2017, mobile phones represented the majority of the wireless communications market and transmitted data primarily over cellular networks. In 2018, the number of IoT devices surpassed the mobile phone in sheer number while implementing a wide range of communication modes (e.g., Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Infrared, RF). In 2025, it’s projected that almost 76 billion devices will be interconnected and actively communicating over a wide variety of proprietary and open communication protocols. [Published by Statista Research Department, Nov 14, 2019, Retrieved January 20, 2020, https://www.statista.com/statistics/471264/iot-number-of-connected-devi…]. This leads to a global population of devices that are designed, used, and maintained with vastly different levels of importance placed on cyber, physical, and operational security requirements. Despite these critical differences, it is highly likely that many will interact or attempt to interact with secure network resources at facilities that are unprepared if not entirely unaware of the associated physical and logical security challenges. This paper will detail efforts being undertaken to help determine a baseline network with trusted devices, understand how that baseline can change (sometimes very rapidly) with the introduction of unknown or untrusted devices, and implement mitigation strategies identified by researchers working with Interconnected of Things testbeds. It will also explore the rapidly growing electronic attack surface resulting from the exponential growth of connected devices, the challenges associated with securing an asset or facility from such a highly varied population of threats, and identify actions that can be taken to mitigate both the direct and indirect risks.