LIVE FROM GSMA MOBILE 360 SERIES – PRIVACY & SECURITY: The security underpinning smartphones handles cyberattacks from a range of sources and the IoT industry can learn from this, said David Rogers, CEO at Copper Horse Solutions.

Rogers was representing the UK government, having worked on its Secure by Design report published earlier this year.

He explained that “my background is in the mobile phone industry and we are at a situation where smartphones are secure. We are defeating on a daily basis some very, very severe attacks and this is with a device that has people’s entire lives. All of their banking, access to their car… so many different threat actors are attracted to the device, but it is such a hard target that its very rare that a breach occurs”.

“The UK government is aware of that and aware that knowledge can be transferred from the mobile industry into the IoT space,” he added.

Speaking about the Mirai botnet attack of 2016, which took advantage of insecure IoT devices, Rogers said “the flaws that happened in the devices that were compromised were trivial, I mean really trivial, they were flaws that shouldn’t exist”.

However, the challenge with IoT is various use cases are not the same and it is a large, complex system. This is why the UK wrote the Secure by Design report – a set of guidelines and best practice for IoT security.

“This work is not finished, we will continue to work on this and bring new recommendations,” he said, adding that it is key not to be overbearing with security requirements as “safety measures can utterly destroy a user experience”.

“We are taking this very seriously, this is kind of a warning.. this is a carrot but the stick will be coming – there are elements of the review will be passed into law… watch this space,”  he concluded.