Beyond Encryption: The Next Wave of IoT Security Challenges

by Somesh Murugan

My experience in IT support introduced me to the practical side of technology - how systems fail, how people interact with them, and how easily small misconfigurations can create big vulnerabilities.

But when I began exploring IoT and embedded devices, I realised there’s another world of security challenges - the kind that doesn’t live in browsers or data centres, but inside tiny chips and invisible airwaves.

At first, I was fascinated by the old vulnerabilities - unencrypted packets, reused keys, or signal sniffing. But as I dug deeper, I saw that we’ve largely outgrown those issues. Encryption is now stronger, firmware signing is common, and secure boot has become a standard.

Yet that progress hasn’t made IoT safe. It’s simply shifted the battlefield.

How IoT Security Has Evolved

The first generation of IoT attacks exploited simple design oversights.Today, devices are far more capable - but also vastly more complex.

Manufacturers have built in AES-level encryption, certificate-based identity, and OTA (over-the-air) updates. LoRaWAN join servers now generate session keys dynamically, and device provisioning pipelines are more controlled.

That’s real progress.But with every security improvement, the attack surface changes shape. The modern challenge isn’t just “Can we encrypt it?” - it’s “Can we trust it for the next ten years?”

The New Threats No One Sees

The latest wave of IoT devices - especially those with Neural Processing Units (NPUs) and embedded AI - introduce attack surfaces buried deep in firmware and hardware.

• Firmware Supply-Chain Tampering: Malicious code can slip into a build pipeline before deployment, infecting devices at scale while appearing legitimate.

• Side-Channel and Physical Attacks: Even perfect encryption leaks information through power use or electromagnetic emissions.

• AI-Driven Jamming and Spoofing: Machine-learning jammers selectively block or fake LoRaWAN or BLE signals, disrupting operations without raising alarms.

• Device Identity at Scale: Managing unique credentials for millions of devices means a single onboarding mistake can compromise thousands.

These aren’t theoretical anymore; they’re already appearing in industrial and consumer ecosystems.

The Everyday IoT Risks No One Talks About

While those advanced threats dominate headlines, there are quieter problems that rarely get the attention they deserve - yet they can cripple entire systems if ignored.

1. Shadow IoT Devices

Unregistered gadgets - from smart plugs to employee wearables often connect to networks unnoticed. They bypass update cycles and introduce hidden vulnerabilities that corporate security tools never see.

2. Default Cloud Configurations

Developers frequently spin up IoT dashboards or MQTT brokers for testing and forget to secure them. Publicly exposed data streams let attackers subscribe, monitor, or inject false messages.

3. Power-Drain (Battery-Depletion) Attacks

Repeated wake-up requests force sensors out of sleep mode, draining batteries across remote deployments. It’s a subtle denial-of-service that looks like a maintenance issue.

4. Data Poisoning in AI-Enabled Devices

Malicious input data can corrupt local ML models running on NPUs, teaching them the wrong patterns. In industrial contexts, this could mean missed anomalies or false safety signals.

5. Insecure Companion Apps

Mobile apps that pair with IoT hardware often store API keys or tokens insecurely. Reverse-engineering them can expose entire device fleets through leaked credentials.

Each of these problems is easy to overlook because they sound too small to matter, yet collectively they represent the human side of security drift, where convenience quietly outruns control.

The Future of Embedded Security

The next era of IoT defence is about autonomy - devices that detect and respond to threats on their own.With on-chip NPUs, microcontrollers can now perform lightweight anomaly detection: spotting unusual packet timings, energy patterns, or signal behaviours and reacting in real time.

Imagine a sensor that recognises it’s being jammed and automatically shifts frequency or isolates itself.That’s the direction embedded security is heading: from static protection to adaptive resilience.

That’s the frontier I want to explore, because the smallest devices are starting to hold the biggest responsibilities.

Afterword

Our Guest blogger, Somesh Murugan is a recent cybersecurity graduate who reframes IoT security as a mature, post-crypto challenge where basic encryption is solved, yet the real battle has shifted to long-term trust, supply-chain integrity, and autonomous on-device resilience in an AI-powered embedded world.

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