As the smart home industry grows and new products are released that live on the homeowner’s network, enterprise-grade IT networking and security practices are slowly gaining a foothold in smart home ecosystems, and 2024 will continue see more reliable and secure cybersecurity solutions and practices hit the market, experts say.  

Common IT principles such as network segmentation and firewalls should already be a part of every integrator’s proposals. With manufacturers producing more advanced networking equipment for the smart home channel, integrators now have a larger opportunity to begin selling their own cybersecurity services such as monitoring for malicious traffic.  

Residential Networks Looking More Enterprise-Like 

Chris Cory, principal cofounder of residential cybersecurity firm Arsenal Cyber Force, which markets itself as a consultant to integrators and homeowners, says trends in residential networking are beginning to look a lot like commercial networks in their capabilities.  

“That’s how large automation companies first started,” Cory says. “It was enterprise first, and then it was brought to the home.” 

That’s the model Arsenal Cyber Force follows, and that enterprise-grade piece of the equation is one that Snap One’s Access Networks brand has evangelized for years, for example.  

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Many more wealthy, high-profile clients have relationships with IT professionals to help them manage their smart home technology, but IT and cybersecurity are very different disciplines in the enterprise space.  

Cybersecurity practices common in enterprise networks like segmenting IoT devices from the main network, VLANs, secure gateways and monitoring will all be important in smart home projects going forward, but it’s password security that continues to be the most insecure part of any technology, says Brian Cory, CEO of Arsenal Cyber Force.  

In setting up smart home systems, dealers either need their customers’ passwords or set up passwords for them.  

“You’ve got to get the customers’ password and all that stuff, but how are dealers safely managing those passwords? Do they have a system to protect them? Because passwords are one of the highest vulnerabilities,” Chris Cory says.  

Integrators will also need to continuously look at their own cybersecurity practices, especially if they have the ability to remotely access their customers’ systems. An integrator with high-profile will have to ensure their own robust security protections.  

While it either hasn’t happened in the smart home space or isn’t being made public, an easy comparison to draw is to managed service providers in the IT industry who are routinely targets of cyberattacks since they hold the keys to a large amount of enterprise networks.  

The same goes for technology management software. In one of the most high-profile cases of a cyber intrusion, IT management software firm SolarWinds had their software compromised in an update, leading to the intrusion of several U.S. agencies and large technology firms by Russian hackers.  

Educating Clients on Potential Risks in Smart Home Cybersecurity

According to Bjorn Jensen, owner of network specialist WhyReboot, as the custom integration industry became more connected and dealers began deploying devices on the network for remote management capabilities, homeowners began having poor experiences with their consumer-grade networking equipment, typically provided from their Internet service provider.  

“Little by little people have had [terrible] experiences, and they found out it was due to their network,” Jensen says.  

With enterprise-grade networking equipment options more available to integrators now, selling cybersecurity services like gateways, sandboxing, content filtering, anti-malware and intrusion prevention should follow. However, many homeowners aren’t demanding it, and integrators aren’t offering it, Jensen notes.  

Part of that is due to education, as the custom home integration market typically isn’t very proficient in commercial-grade IT networking and security principles.  

“I think a lot of integrators could just do a better job at kind of educating their clients on what the potential threats are,” Jensen says. 

The growth in the networking space and the sheer amount of new products being added to the network will likely encourage more cybersecurity best practices in the industry, Jensen hopes.  

“We’ve been pushing this forever,” he says. “it’s a slow adoption, but just like networks were and they continue to grow, I imagine this space is going to grow as well.” 

What could also force the smart home industry to get more serious about cybersecurity are the growing geopolitical tensions. Ukraine has been the victim of ongoing cyberattacks against several sectors since the war with Russia began, and researchers have been sounding the alarm on increasing activity from nation state-aligned cyber actors.  

While most cyberattacks target critical infrastructure, smart home systems of important politicians or public figures could potentially be targeted, Jensen says, making cybersecurity on these networks crucial.  

“If the U.S. goes into an overt war,” he says, “then, we could probably look to see some bad actors just trying to do whatever kind of damage they can do.”  

See our other home technology trends and predictions for 2024 by clicking here.

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