Threat Intelligence Report Says IoT Attacks Doubled Within a Year, Predicts an Upward Trend

 Nokia’s threat intelligence report found that poor protection practices and the use of automated tools by cyber criminals fueled the rise in cyber attacks on internet-connected devices. Infected Internet of things (IoT) devices constituted about 33% of all the infected gadgets, according to Nokia’s report. This was more than double the number of infected devices last year. The report predicted that the number of IoT attacks would continue to rise because of higher adoption rates of IoT devices. The report was based on data aggregated from over 150 million devices connected to networks with Nokia’s NetGuard Endpoint Security product installed.

Nokia’s report predicted an increase in demand for how much do computer scientists make devices by consumers and enterprises. The use of IoT devices is expected to continue rising in areas such as smart home security monitoring systems, smart medical devices, drones, among others. The report noted that the increased adoption of IoT devices is because consumers were taking advantage of the increased bandwidth, low latency, and the proliferation of 5G networks.

IoT devices had the second-highest rate of infection at 32.72% of all platforms. This was doubled that of 16.17% in 2019.  Windows PCs had the highest infection rates, contributing to 38.92% of all infections recorded, thus clocking a three-point increase from 35.82% in 2019. Android devices contributed to 26.64% of infections across all platforms, which was a massive drop from 47.15% in 2019. Surprisingly, iPhones’ infection rate increased from 0.85% in 2019 to 1.72%. Android was the only platform to report a decrease in infection rates perhaps because of Google’s new security practices.