John Wechsler, the founder of the Indiana IoT Lab, sat down with TechRepublic’s Alison DeNisco Rayome at the lab in Fishers, Indiana, to discuss the importance of cybersecurity in a developing Internet of Things (IoT) world. You can watch the video above, or read the transcript below.

John Wechsler:One of the things about IoT that’s really unique is the number of access points in an existing network. So when you look at having embedded sensors and controls and access points throughout a network, in IoT there’s exponentially more than any traditional network. So cybersecurity and security protocols are increasingly important and they’re essential in IoT development. If you’re not baking in cybersecurity into your IoT development plans, you’re probably not doing it right.

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This is an area that’s highly specialized. It is evolving very rapidly. The importance of having an experienced professional is probably never more known than with IoT. So I think one of the most important things is to get a good cybersecurity developer in-house or have a consultant that you can bring in to help guide you through this process as you develop your own best practices. But it’s really important to not try to make it up yourself as you go along. This is not something you just Google the answers to and figure out. You really need some expertise in-house to do this properly.

I think when you look at some of the biggest failures, it is related to companies that just didn’t undertake the right protocols. They either didn’t take it seriously or they thought they could do it themselves. The stakes are very high. If you do this wrong, you’re going to end up in a very high profile case of breaches, or you could open up physical locations to harm potentially, if you’re dealing with access and controls and that kind of thing. So I think it’s really important to understand what you know and what you don’t know. Stick to what you’re good at, but bring experts in in areas where you need it. I think cybersecurity is one of those.