Some of your smart devices are not prepared to withstand hacker attacks, with many of these vulnerable to trespass in minutes. A tech expert shared with Cheddar how shoppers should gear up, ahead of this year's Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Craig Williams, senior technical leader and global outreach manager at Cisco, says connected Barbies, baby monitors, and smart TVs, just to name a few, are the latest items of choice on a hacker's list. Some estimates project that by 2020 the world will be home to 20.8 billion smart connected products, making poorly secured smart devices and toys a criminal's opportunity to "make bank."
Williams says that unfortunately there is no secure operating system out there. The bar is very low for security within IoT devices. The best thing you can do is to find a manufacturer that will continue to make patches to its system. He also urges consumers to push harder on these manufacturers in order to ensure safe products. The expert suggests researching on Google whether products are hacker proof before purchasing the item.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said Thursday that the majority of iPhones sold in the U.S. in the current fiscal quarter will be sourced from India, while iPads and other devices will come from Vietnam as the company works to avoid the impact of President Trump’s tariffs on its business. Apple’s earnings for the first three months of the year topped Wall Street’s expectations thanks to high demand for its iPhones, and the company said tariffs had a limited effect on the fiscal second quarter’s results. Cook added that for the current quarter, assuming things don’t change, Apple expects to see $900 million added to its costs as a result of the tariffs.
