Federal Government Information Technology

Internet of Things Cybersecurity Act - An 'A' for effort [Commentary]

Fifth Domain: The Internet of Things Cybersecurity Act of 2017 (IoTCA) attempts to avoid repeating history. We all know that the internet is rooted in one “A” (Availability) but not in another very important “A” (Authentication).

The proposed IoTCA bill gives the problem of trustworthy authentication a good deal of attention, since solving the authentication problem (people-to-machines, software-to-hardware, data-to-processes, etc.) would be, from an internet security perspective, almost analogous to achieving world peace.

As billions of IoT devices become part of our businesses and homes, their value will be limited by the degree to which we can trust their authenticity – that they are what/who they claim to be. Though the IoTCA is not a silver bullet, it attempts to help reduce the level of obvious risks in a ballooning population of internet-connected devices.

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