The financial consequences of these problems can be severe and quickly run into hundreds of thousands of pounds. There's the cost of the lost production, the cost of analysing the problem and rectifying it, as well as the cost of securing the unprotected devices in an emergency situation. Telephone switch and router problems, though probably less expensive, can still run into tens of thousands of pounds.
Why is this vulnerability so widespread? There are a number of reasons. With gateway security being king, these devices have been hidden inside the network; and with all the major infrastructure changes taking place over recent years, securing internal devices has mostly been a low priority.
As always, cost has been a major factor. Firewalls used to cost a lot more than they do now, as well as needing considerable resources to deploy them, so the risk/return equation didn't make any sense. Management issues have been another factor. Adding tens or hundreds of additional security devices to the IT department's management load would have been an expensive nonsense. Finally, patching vulnerabilities has often been dealt with on a tactical basis, so the workload and expense have not always been planned or costed.
The situation has changed, however, and solutions have emerged to tacklethese M2M challenges. Low-cost, easily-deployed miniature firewall/anti virus products such as Innominate's mGuard are now available and can be installed on a server or in front of a device in minutes. They can protect key IP devices for a few hundred pounds, as well as being capable of delivering the level of reporting needed for compliance with various regulations.
These new products can also provide the sort of central configuration and sophisticated management capabilities needed to make administering them (whether in small or larger numbers) relatively stress free. Organisations are increasingly deploying this type of solution, which is capable of changing the way they cope with the increasing M2M threat to their security.
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