Extreme Networks announces new IoT product

Extreme Networks announced the general availability of Extreme Networks’ Defender for IoT which helps organisations secure unsecured IoT devices. Defender for IoT can be deployed on any network and designed to allow non-technical staff at schools, hospitals, retailers and hospitality venues can use it to isolate and protect both wired and wireless IoT devices from cyber attacks. IoT devices present two major security flaws for businesses today. Most lack embedded security—they were built to run on private networks where the assumption was it was tightly controlled, and device-level security wasn’t required. Manufacturers never considered that the private enterprise network could be connected to the public internet, and therefore the devices may run out-of-date operating systems, have hardcoded passwords and/or lack anti-virus and firewall capabilities. And they are typically deployed in a flat or unsegmented network so that if breached, the attacker can gain access to sensitive areas of the network.