When the FBI delivers safety tips to smart health smart health connected object owners

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Watches, voice assistants, appliances, toys … "Almost all items on your family's Christmas list must be smart health connected", the FBI points out in a blog note published last week. While security issues have been the talk of IoT in recent times due to a lack of transparency and reliability of systems, the US Federal Agency distills its advice in a weekly column about new technologies.

SET UP A dedicated NETWORK

 "Do you know what data is collected, how and where it is sent?" The institution puts its finger on an unease more and more pregnant in the use of smart health connected objects. If researchers are gradually developing software to identify "spies", nothing beats prevention when there should be twice as many devices in circulation in 2022 than there were in 2018.

According to the FBI, the first reflex to adopt is to devote a WiFi network separate from the one used by other equipment – computers, tablets and smartphones. What protect the most confidential and sensitive data, putting them out of reach of potential piracy conducted via IoT. This will prevent the hacker from making use of these seemingly innocent devices to create a path to your router, which would allow him to take full control of your health home and access items you thought you had. put in security "says the federal agency.

For most routers, you can configure a feature to create virtual networks – called VLANs. This "micro-segmentation" makes it possible to obtain several distinct networks … while resting, in fact, on the same router. But this approach may seem technical for someone who is not expert in the matter. There is a more down-to-earth approach of getting a second router that does not share the same connection.

UPDATES ARE NOT OPTIONAL

Beyond this frankly priority rule, other actions can be taken to secure the smart health connected objects. The FBI recalls the importance of "change the default settings" devices, including the preconfigured password. The latter must be as long as possible and specific to IoT uses. Of course, updates are not optional – both for software, hardware, and the operating system under which it runs. While some are automatic, others require validation. In any case, they come to fill security gaps.

Finally, the federal agency emphasizes that "many smart health connected objects are used in connection with companion applications on smartphones". Often used in the background, they use default permissions that the user has probably never granted. It is advisable to check the parameters of the smartphone to read the information collected by a service … and deny access to it when the authorizations appear unreasonable.

Last week, in its column, the FBI highlighted the best practices to adopt by owners of smart health connected TVs. If no case of piracy has been reported on this type of devices to date, the institution still prefers to put an obstructive filter – such as black tape – on the camera built into the device. It could, indeed, quickly become tempting for pirates to seize a device occupying a place as central as a TV to spy on the occupants … and, why not, make them sing according to what they will have could record.

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