Four in five Aussie IoT adopters have faced a hack

Four in five Australian enterprises that have adopted IoT have faced a hacking attempt on their IoT devices, according to research from Extreme Networks.

A survey of 540 IT professionals across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, including Australia, also found that Australian respondents are most concerned of all surveyed about IoT security.

Nearly nine in 10 (87%) Australian enterprises have adopted IoT, and just 2% are not considering the use of IoT in their organisation.

But while 80% of Australian respondents reported being aware of successful or attempted hacks, 60% are not using security measures for their IoT beyond basic passwords.

In addition, while across all countries 55% of IT professionals expressed a belief that the main risk of breaches come from outside of the organisation, research suggests that insider and privilege misuse is one of the top three causes of breaches.

“Our research shows there is an imperative to invest more time and energy into network security, especially to better manage the ever-growing volume of IoT devices being deployed across organisations in Australia,” Extreme Networks GM for ANZ Julian Critchlow said.

“At Extreme, we take an integrated, multilayered approach to network security and device visibility that combines the right level of automation and policy-based controls to manage an increasingly complex environment.”

As awareness of the threat posed by IoT attacks grows, enterprises are exploring new methods of controlling networks, the report found.

Nearly seven in 10 (68%) Australian respondents want network access to be controlled from the cloud, which Extreme Networks said validates predictions that more than half of enterprise network systems will transition to SaaS-based networking by the end of 2023.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Leo Lintang