Zones of Trust: A New Way of Thinking about IoT Security

Last year, when attackers hacked into more than 25,000 Internet of Things (IoT) closed-circuit TV devices and used them in a denial-of-service botnet attack, this question was asked in boardrooms everywhere: What would happen if hackers stole my organization's surveillance video? This and other attacks on vulnerable IoT devices have put the focus on how we can safely add these devices to enterprise networks, a topic that involves both IT and physical security.

What's the Worst That Can Happen?
Before considering an IoT surveillance video implementation, answer these questions: Why are you recording the video in the first place? What will happen if it gets stolen? 

We can put recorded video data into a few different buckets:

The potential life-threatening outcome of the first bucket may seem extreme, but imagine a nefarious individual or group that manipulates and studies stolen video to understand the daily patterns of a company's VIPs. This personnel monitoring could be to kidnap for ransom, or to find the right time or location to plant a virus or Trojan on a target's computer or mobile device.

Also consider what happens if video is hijacked, or the wrong people can see the live streams from your IoT cameras. What if your video is compromised and unusable? How will that affect your organization? These are the foundational questions you must ask to determine how much cyber protection you should apply to the physical security of your networked components. But how do you prioritize securing these resources?

Zones of Trust
Looking at the most current cybersecurity trends for traditional enterprise architecture as well as IoT deployments, the architectural focus is moving toward "zones of trust." This approach entails mapping, or prioritizing planning and resources in a ring of zones based on the critical nature of the networked resources. The most critical zone is one in which people and resources would be damaged or injured if there is a breach (cyber or physical). 

In the most critical zone (death or injury), cyber threats can target operational technology such as traffic lights or environmental systems. Cybersecurity must be at its strongest, and physical security such as video or access control and environmental sensors must be able to detect anomalous behavior to detect hacks as well as non-malicious failures.

The next zone could be one where a breach could cause serious financial hardship or a significant disruption in business operations. The next zones follow in terms of inconvenience, down toward the inconsequential. This helps to frame risk with assets. In this planning concept, there are significant overlaps between both physical security and cybersecurity.

On the cybersecurity side, much compromise is being tilted in favor of "ease of use" for networked resources over cybersecurity measures that may be inconvenient for users. We also see a similar trend with physical security, including video surveillance and access control. Organizations are reluctant to appear overly intrusive in day-to-day life at work, in retail settings, and even in the public sector, such as government facilities.

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If you apply zones of trust to physical security, you first must look at the value of the various assets you're trying to protect. This could mean senior executives or people with access to critical systems via their cyber credentials. 

You also need to monitor people and systems from an audio, visual, and access control perspective. You're not looking for bad actors within your organizations, but people with the ability to unwittingly inject malware into your systems.

Next, look at personnel, and which zones they fit in in terms of their monetary and intellectual property value. What physical security resources and prioritization do you give to people, your most critical assets? What is the threat of physical harm? How do you protect against this in the environments you control?

Organizations can protect against edge device (for example, video) threats in a number of ways, including changing credentials from defaults; creating tiered access (such as view-only rights for monitoring access); and using credential-based access for servers and storage. In this manner, organizations can protect the device from becoming an attack point.

The Need to Prioritize Video Data
It's important for IT organizations to understand that video is valuable data. As more video server and storage resources have moved to the network edge, cameras are targeted by attackers who seek to infect a corporate network with a virus or Trojan. Video can provide detailed information about personnel, locations, and procedures that surround high-level assets. Video feeds can be disabled or manipulated, leaving security teams effectively blinded or confused, putting an organization at risk of physical threats.

It can also be used to monitor and capture online passwords and monitor behaviors to be mimicked (e.g., computer repair services) to get closer to targets. This can be used to gain entry in the guise of a known person.

Given how valuable video data is, IT organizations should make it a priority to look closely at how video data is transmitted and stored on their network. This includes looking at who has what access rights, how policies are being enforced, whether the system is deployed and maintained properly, and whether there are clear roles of ownership.

A cybersecurity threat analysis focused on your video data will help determine if your organization's video systems need to be more secure.

It will take careful planning and prioritization of resources to keep assets secure. By using zones of trust, your organization can ensure that the most critical assets have the highest levels of protection.

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