Artificial intelligence brought several developments intended to make daily activities convenient for people. One of these developments is revolutionizing the concept of smart homes and the Internet of Things (IoT) to provide a secure interconnection of controllable devices in person or remotely to promote convenience and efficiency.
However, with this convenience comes the crucial task of ensuring the security and protection of these interconnected devices. This article explores the challenges and strategies to secure AI-powered smart homes and IoT devices, safeguarding user privacy and data.
What is the Internet of Things (IoT)?
Although self-explanatory, this question remains famous among novices in artificial intelligence. According to a definition by IBM, The Internet of Things refers to a network of physical devices, vehicles, appliances and other physical objects embedded with sensors, software and network connectivity, allowing data collection and sharing. Industries such as Agriculture, Healthcare, Retail, Manufacturing, and Transportation have embedded this technology into their activities and constantly advance its use for better results.
What are Smart Homes?
Smart homes leverage the IoT technology to become a home (either wireless or hardwired) with a convenient setup allowing the automatic control of appliances and devices remotely from any suitable location, leveraging the power of an internet connection on a smart device or other medium. Features such as home access, lighting, temperature, etc, are part of what is controllable.
What are the risks associated with Smart Homes?
Having a fully automated home with AI such as Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant comes with the risk of opening up your home to unlimited intrusion attempts worldwide. The question at this point would be, “What can go wrong?”
Are there any Privacy concerns associated with Smart Homes?
How private are my conversations? Who can see me? From where can they see me? These are a few of the numerous questions associated with privacy issues when discussing smart homes and IoT. Smart homes have many hackable devices that could become their users’ doom. An automated gate, smart TV, robot vacuum cleaner, self-driving car, security cameras, etc., are accessible by skilled threat actors who could utilize them to extract information that aids in identity theft or eavesdropping. One of the ways threat actors can infiltrate privacy is through smart devices. Threat actors can also compromise these devices and add them to a botnet to attack other networks and devices.
How to Secure AI-Powered Smart Homes and IoT Devices
Prioritize Security and Privacy
Protecting smart home devices starts by ensuring the best cyber security hygiene, which is the first layer against cyber attacks. Analysts suggest using edge AI explicitly designed for smart homes to improve latency and utilizing sophisticated multimodal sensors to boost smart home protection.
Edge intelligence introduces an extra layer of security by allowing smart home devices to identify and ignore potentially harmful commands an adversary enters quickly. The intelligence allows smart homes to alert household members upon discovering an unrecognized individual attempting to or already accessing the house.
Introduction of Edge Computing for Smart Home Devices
The dependency of most smart home technology on cloud storage is on the rise. It implies data constantly leaving the house to a storage space. Allowing smart home devices to process some of the data they gather locally can invariably improve privacy. One way to achieve this is embedding intelligence within the home environment rather than relying on cloud storage facilities. AIoT ( Artificial Intelligence of Things) makes this possible because it embeds intelligence and processing power directly into the smart home device, thereby locally processing commands.
Keeping Smart home devices software updated.
IoT device manufacturers understand the danger of getting hacked, so they conduct regular vulnerability tests to detect and patch vulnerabilities. As a user, it is hazardous to neglect updates when released. Not maintaining regular updates leaves smart home devices open to known and unknown vulnerabilities.
Network Segmentation for Smart Home Devices
Sometimes, too much trust is the baseline for a preventable intrusion. Ensuring adequate security requires creating a homeowner account and a guest account to enable a clear access definition that will prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information.
Encryption and Authentication
Once again, it’s necessary to address the issue of access control. Defining access control enforces authentication on users before granting them access. Implementing multifactor authentication is vital, and ensuring data encryption can prevent a breach of privacy. Best practices require strong network encryption, like implementing WPA2 on a router and ensuring strong password policies.
IoT Devices Audit
Technology changes daily, and not every device edition is upgradable to a new one; most upgrades remain within the device version environment. There are several reasons for this intentional design; one is for the manufacturer to stay in business. Changing some IoT devices to a more recent one helps to stay some step higher when it comes to security because each newer version counters the flaws of the older ones.
Blockchain Technology
Blockchain technology has proven to offer more data security because of the difficulty of altering data when stored. Implementing blockchain can provide more secure and tamper-resistant storage of IoT data, ensuring data integrity and enhancing trust among users.
Conclusion
Securing AI-powered smart homes and IoT devices is paramount to protecting user data, privacy, and digital safety. As technology advances, a collaborative effort involving manufacturers, developers, policymakers, and users is crucial to establishing robust security measures, adhering to regulations, and fostering a culture of responsible and secure innovation in smart homes and IoT. With a proactive approach and the adoption of advanced security measures, AI-powered smart homes can offer convenience without compromising security and privacy.
