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When Everything's Networked

You'll need a strategy for dealing with the hidden risks of Internet-connected air conditioners, door locks and forklifts.

Fourth, good device networking security is continuously changing. The old security model was like a door lock: Once it was locked, you'd done what you could with the technology. The new model is like virus protection: You have an ongoing relationship with a security services provider that is constantly looking for new threats, doing its own research and installing upgrades continuously. James advises hiring third-party tiger teams on a regular basis to test both your own network and the quality of the advice you have been getting from your security services provider.

These last three principles should look familiar. Proactivity, surveillance in depth and rapid responsiveness are the load-bearing members of every form of security. Every CSO campaigns for them, usually to disappointing effect: Nobody can make the time, being careful is too great an inconvenience, everyday business can't be interrupted for training sessions, it's too expensive and so on.

So perhaps the most important piece of good news about device networking is that its security risks are so egregious, so scary, that they will force companies to implement the security principles they should have been following all along. Certainly any CSO can count on a high level of interest from an executive who has been trapped in an elevator for an hour by a 15-year-old Romanian hacker looking for a bit of recreation.