IBM Corp.’s Internet of Things is fundamentally morphing the way businesses operate and how people interact with their world. As virtually everything can now be connected — from cars to appliances to fitness trackers — businesses can harness the resulting data to improve every aspect of what they do. However, given the well-publicized IoT device network hack this past week, there’s a new conversation that’s opened up about IoT security and potential vulnerabilities, and businesses need to know how to make these connections more trusted and secure.

Chris O’Connor, GM of IBM Watson IoT Offerings at IBM, joined John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during IBM World of Watson, held in Las Vegas, NV.  They discussed IoT security and how IBM engages its customers to analyze data from devices.

The security game for IoT

Furrier brought up last week’s monumental hack and how in some respects it’s the same old security game.

“What’s really happened here is, you’re watching a new industry adapt to problems we’ve had before. Except you’re out in the wild now; you’re wearing it on your wrist, you’re driving it around … [you’ve got] access control problems of the device [and] gateway access problems,” O’Connor said. “These are problems we’ve solved before; now we’re solving it in the IoT context. [You] have to lock down these steps along the way.”

They discussed that while the problem has not changed, it’s a much larger scope now; a much greater number of players need to be educated on things like changing default passwords and making sure all devices on their end are secure. O’Connor also stressed that when manufacturers create devices, they need to decide on the necessary level of security, from the planning stages.

IBM’s big plans for IoT

Vellante asked about IBM’s strategy for selling IoT, as well as how to engage the business.

“At the enterprise level, we talk about business transformation with CEOs/CIOs. … We have offerings for each major industry out there. … If you approach it from more of a consumer or developer [point of view], you can take courses out from Coursera [an online course provider]; it’s an IT-oriented course,” said O’Connor.

He went on to say that some companies, even before formally engaging IBM, will run models through Coursera to get a feel for how IoT can potentially improve and transform their business.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM World of Watson 2016.

*Disclosure: IBM and other companies sponsor some IBM World of Watson segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither IBM nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

Photo by SiliconANGLE