I told IoT Waterloo that security doesn’t matter

I spoke about IoT security last month at the Internet of Things Waterloo meetup put on by my good friend Ian Pilon (right) seen laughing above with Emile Mclean about my seemingly ridiculous premise. Ok, he was probably stress-laughing because his laptop was not cooperating and the talks were scheduled to start in 10 minutes.

The TL;DR: make a conscious and explicit decision to invest in security or not. Deciding to not invest can be a reasonable and rational business decision. Not making a decision is just poor risk management.

I pitched this talk to Ian after attending the inaugural IoT Waterloo event back in April. There’s so much enthusiasm and gold-rush momentum toward what we now call IoT, and I noticed a very conspicuous lack of discussion around security of these bits of tech that are physically installed in our homes and workplaces now. Hey, I want all that utility too, but I’m slightly freaked out about the wonderland of misuse possibilities it offers to the purveyors, the curious, and the bad guys.

Kevin Madill from Miovision hit me up for my deck from this gig, so here it is with and without notes. Oh, and for those that only know me from the make-o-sphere or my cultural wanderings, I did a bunch of security stuff at BlackBerry in my 12 years there.

A few more pics…

Work, damn you. Work! Followed by: Hey Darin, can we just use your laptop for everyone?

Hey, BlackBerry project management ninja Jeff Collins dressing the place up a little.

Ian packs this room at Ren41. Wait-list for each of his events, I believe.

Both Ian and I are talkers. When we meet for lunch, there’s very little eating and a whole lot of brainstorming.

Ah, the other photographer arrived. We agreed that shooting in the low light of this room is roughly equivalent to shooting in complete darkness. He pulled out the 50mm f/1.8 after a while just to get something.

I like the vibe of this event. Definitely going to keep coming out to IoTW meetups.

Kicking it off.

James Legue talking start-up experience.

Cam Davies, Marketing Manager with Miovision.

Kurtis McBride from Miovision.

Thanks to Ian for the opportunity to speak to IoTW. I feel like I’ve done my altruistic duty to poke WR into considering security around the Internet of Things. Now I’m curious if they’ll pick up what I’m throwin’ down.

DW