Wanted: Smart Public Policy for Internet of Things Security

Increasingly, the Internet of Things has become a weapon in hackers’ schemes…Now, experts in the U.S. are asking regulators to step in. Calls for public policy to improve device security have reached a fever pitch following a series of high-profile denial-of-service attacks leveraged in part by unsuspecting DVRs, routers, and webcams. In October, hackers flooded the Internet service company Dyn with traffic by assembling millions of IoT devices into a virtual botnet using a malicious program called Mirai.