Internet of Things (IoT) comprises physical devices—such as sensors, cameras, appliances, vehicles, medical equipment, and industrial controllers—that collect data, perform actions, and communicate with other devices or cloud services. Its distinctive assets include telemetry, control functions, device identities, and sometimes sensitive location, health, or operational data. Availability and integrity can be safety- or production-critical, while many devices have limited processing capacity, long service lives, and constrained maintenance access.
Security depends on the complete device lifecycle: maintain an accurate inventory, replace default credentials with unique authentication, verify firmware and provide signed, supportable updates, and restrict management interfaces through network segmentation. Exposed services, insecure update mechanisms, weak device-to-cloud APIs, physical access, and third-party components can enable unauthorized monitoring or control, compromise other systems, or conscript devices into attacks. Privacy protections should limit collection and access to telemetry, and monitoring should support detection and safe isolation without disrupting essential operations.