Extreme Networks Moves Into Edge Device Security With Defender for IoT

Extreme Networks is moving into IoT security with its new product, Defender for IoT, that secures wired and wireless devices. It’s a smart move for the networking vendor. Gartner estimates that 20.4 billion connected things will be in use by organizations worldwide by 2020. And IoT device attacks are on the rise. The product targets smart cities, industrial IoT, and connected health care. It secures devices that don’t have embedded security, said Abby Strong, vice president of product marketing at Extreme Networks. “For example, a multi-million-dollar MRI machine,” she said. “It’s completely amazing visual technology, but you find out too late that it was built to be on a completely private network and you can’t even change its IP address.” These types of edge devices may run out-of-date operating systems, have hardcoded passwords, and lack anti-virus and firewall capabilities because their manufacturers didn’t consider that the private enterprise network could be connected to the public internet. And they are typically deployed in a flat or unsegmented network so that if breached the attacker can gain access to other areas of the network.