About 540 million years ago, our planet saw a sudden and major diversification of organisms, with a vast number of species suddenly appearing in the fossil record. Paleontologists call this event the “Cambrian explosion.” The computing world is currently experiencing its own version of the Cambrian explosion. Two decades ago, computers were primarily large beige boxes that came with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Today, computers come as smartphones, tablets, glasses, cars, watches, clothes, fitness trackers, health monitoring devices, parking meters, electronic locks, smart mirrors, drones, and more.

This Internet of Things (IoT) represents the third wave of computing. The...

While IoT is often talked about as a single monolithic concept, it is more useful to think of it as a three-tier pyramid. Each tier represents a different class of device, based on the computational power of the device, as well as the amount of interaction and attention a person needs to devote to each device. Each tier also poses different kinds of security challenges due to the nature of the devices in that tier. See Figure 1 for an overview.

At the top of the pyramid, each person will have a few devices that have a great deal of...

Cybersecurity for IoT has much in common with the challenges that we are already facing with desktop computers, cloud computing, and enterprise systems. These same problems will still exist for IoT. The same kinds of attackers will also be present. These include script kiddies with low levels of skill; skilled individuals looking to exploit vulnerabilities for personal gain; criminal gangs looking to make money by targeting corporations or everyday consumers; and nation-states and non-state actors seeking state secrets or intellectual property, or potential new ways of disrupting an adversary. However, IoT also poses some unique differences that require new kinds...

Given this landscape for the Internet of Things, what can we as a community do to move forward? It is important to keep in mind that the IoT landscape is still very chaotic and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. There will be a lot of battles between major corporations as they compete to become the dominant platform for certain tiers of the IoT pyramid. However, even in this context, there is still much that researchers and policymakers can do.

Today, it is possible for an undergraduate to get a degree in computer science without having taken...

We are currently at a crossroads—not just in computing, but in human history. There is only one point in time when a global computing network will be created, and that time is now. There is only one point in time when the foundation is laid for how computation, communication, and sensing will be woven into our physical world, and that time is now. The Internet of Things offers tremendous potential in terms of improving healthcare, safety, sustainability, education, transportation, and more. But this vision is possible only if we can find new ways of making billions of these devices...