The Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC) Wednesday released a report “Code of Practice for Securing Consumer Internet of Things (IoT)” as a baseline requirement aligned with global standards and best practices.
“These guidelines will help in securing consumer IoT devices & ecosystem as well as managing vulnerabilities. This report is intended for use by IoT device manufacturers, Service providers/ system integrators and application developers etc,” an official Press Information Bureau (PIB) statement said.
As per the National Digital Communication Policy (NDCP) 2018 released by Department of Telecommunications (DoT), an ecosystem is to be created for 5 billion connected devices by 2022.
“Therefore, it is expected that around 60% of 5 billion i.e. 3 billion connected devices may exist in India by 2022,” the statement added.
The rationale for releasing the guidelines, as per TEC, is to ensure that the IoT end-points comply with the safety and security standards and guidelines to protect the users and the networks that connect to these IoT devices.
“The hacking of the devices/networks being used in daily life would harm companies, organisations, nations and more importantly people, therefore securing the IoT eco-system end-to-end i.e. from devices to the applications is very important,” it added.
The government projects that there may be 26.4 billion IoT devices in service globally by 2026. Out of this approximately 20% will be on cellular technologies. Ratio of Consumer and Enterprise IoT devices may be 45% : 55%.
