1 Cisco Offers $300,000 Prize For 'Internet of Things' Security Apps

In the last few years, this emerging domain for the Internet of Things has been attracting the significant interest, and will continue for the years to come. It would be a $20 Trillion Market over the next several years, but Security and privacy are the key issues for such applications, and still face some enormous challenges.

Cisco has announced a global and industry-wide initiative to bring the Security community and Researchers together to contribute in securing the Internet of Things (IoT) and launched a contest called the "Internet of Things Grand Security Challenge", offering prizes of up to $300,000 for winners.

Since Smart devices are growing at an exponential pace with increase in connecting devices embedded in cars, retail systems, refrigerators, televisions and countless other things people use in everyday life and is expected to grow to 50 billion by 2020. So, in an effort to deliver the security solutions necessary to protect the increasing range of connected devices in the Internet of Things, Cisco has challenged security experts around the world.

"We're connecting more of our world every day through smart, IP-enabled devices ranging from home appliances, healthcare devices, and industrial equipment. These new connected devices are offering new ways to share information and are changing the way we live," reads the blog post.

The Contest was announced by the senior vice president of the security group at Cisco, Christopher Young, in his keynote at this week's RSA Conference, said "the idea is 'a contest of experts around the world to submit blueprints' for how security issues created by the Internet of Things could be addressed. It's expected that up to six winning entries would be selected and the prize money awarded at the Internet of Things Forum in the fall."

It's expected that up to six winning entries would be selected and the prize money from $50,000 to $75,000 would be awarded by Cisco to winning contestants at the Internet of Things Forum in the fall.

A Cisco team of security experts will evaluate proposals based on the following criteria:

• Feasibility, scalability, performance, and ease-of-use
• Applicability to address multiple IoT verticals (manufacturing, mass transportation, healthcare, oil and gas, smart grid, etc.)
• Technical maturity/viability of the proposed approach
• Proposers’ expertise and ability to feasibly create a successful outcome

About a month back, we already posted that how hundreds of thousands of Smart TVs, Refrigerator, and other smart household appliances were compromised by hackers to send out malicious spam emails.

So, in future the "Internet of Things" can become an easy weapon for cyber criminals to launch large scale of cyber attacks and to protect ourselves, we should have a good and effective security solution, in which Cisco is contributing a way.

The winners of the Internet of Things Security Grand Challenge will be named in the northern autumn of 2014, by The Evaluation Panel of Cisco.