The Dark Side of your Wearables: Are these really Secure?

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The use of wearable is on the rise. Revolutionary enterprises are taking wearables as yet another opportunity for mobile technology for increased efficiency, improve workflow and enhance communication.

However, the bitter side of these wearables is that with the rise in their popularity, associated security concerns have also rapidly increased. According to a 2014 report presented by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, about 86 percent of people expressed their concern for wearables and the increasing risk of data security breaches.

With sensitive information, especially related to the enterprises being transferred from wrist to wrist, there’s a strong need for the businesses to prepare security policies and procedures regarding the use of wearables within the enterprise.

Here are the 3 potential Security Threats to Wearables:

  1. Spy Gear For the 21st Century – As devices continue to permeate modern business, the secret agent technology is becoming more of a reality today. Wearable glasses that allow users to easily capture video and screenshots, these devices are greatly being used to steal sensitive business and even personal information.

Solution: Information captured by such wearable should be controlled by policy with regular checks being put in place to ensure enforcement of those policies.

  1. Black Market Data – Another major concern from these wearable technologies is the sale of sensitive data recorded by these devices. When such data is exchanged, there are great chances for it to be intercepted by the hackers.
Solution: It is a must for the IT app developers to build their apps with a strong security using robust data encryption so as to prevent hackers from accessing and  understanding data.
  1. Connectivity between Wearables technologies – Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity between wearables and paired smartphones is another area of vulnerability. Lately, security company BitDefender explained that the Bluetooth communication between smartphones could be decoded/decrypted using brute-force attacks. Instead of focusing on software weaknesses, hackers choose to continuous trial and error by trying username and password combinations until they crack the code to access the data.
Solution: Enterprises should concentrate more on limiting wearables capabilities that are responsible for most threats, including disabling certain features and restricting the usage of these technologies to certain sensitive office areas.

“Every wave of technology gets scrutinized for weakness and weaknesses that are found are exploited”. “It’s certainly an area we need to keep an eye on for emerging threats down the road.”