Anything that is connected to the internet is vulnerable and needs to have updates.
GREENSBORO, N.C. — In case you missed it, the City of Winston-Salem had some sort of cyber event right after Christmas and still can’t take any online payments. No matter where you live you should care about this because the “loophole” that was found in the system, is what cyber security experts call a vulnerability. Your world and your life is filled with them!
“If you have any device that connects to the internet, and probably everybody watching this interview has more than one. You really want to know how every device that you have that connects to the internet gets updated and by whom,” said Joseph Steinberg, Cyber Security Expert & Consultant.
Hmmm…Let’s think of the devices you have:
Your phone, tablet, computer, those are a given.
But also your doorbell camera, security cameras, smart TV, robot vacuum, your programmable thermostat, not to mention your Christmas present, the bird feeder cam!
Steinberg says if you have devices connected to the internet they’re vulnerable and you are too. The updates for those devices can’t be ignored.
“It’s important to remember, you can have a lot of secure computers at home. If you have a vulnerable camera, and that camera gets taken over by a criminal, they can use that to try to attack the computers, um, or to monitor the traffic between your computers. So you don’t want that to happen, so keep your devices updated,” said Steinberg.
I know a lot of you are thinking about the updates that need to happen on your phone. You may not like to do the update as soon as it’s released because sometimes the update has bugs in it that are fixed after a week or so.
and we saw an example of this problem uh earlier this year when we had the crowd strike situation, in which an update essentially caused products to malfunction in a major fashion. The reality is that if you had to bet on doing the updates or not doing the updates, which is going to lead you to a better situation, it’s going to be doing the updates.
