While most IT professionals acknowledge the growing amount of IoT devices on their networks, they are unaware of how to properly secure them.
New research from ForeScout Technologies analysed responses from over 350 IT pros from a wide range of companies around the world in various sectors and found that 85 percent lacked confidence in their ability to see connected devices as soon as they joined their networks. Almost a quarter of respondents said they completely lacked confidence.
On average, respondents had at least nine out of 27 different types of IoT devices that they could identify on their networks such as desktop PCs, IP phones, smart phones and tablets.
Fewer than half (44 percent) of respondents have a security policy that includes IoT devices. Almost a third (30 percent) said their company failed to have a specific solution in place to secure IoT devices and 26 percent don't know if they have security policies on their devices.
Almost half (45 percent) of respondents indicated that in-office security policies did not extend to their home networks even while accessing sensitive company information.
“IoT represents one of the largest fundamental changes to the enterprise in decades, said Rob Greer, CMO and SVP of products at ForeScout Technologies. “The challenge now is to ensure that its promise is realised in a secure and responsible way. The ability to share real-time contextual insights and implement agentless security policies across the organisation encourages healthy practices from the inside out.”