A concept big companies struggle to find balance with is also one that is important for your home. There are many types of tech that you can purchase these days that can make your life much easier (or harder) depending on how you look at it. For example, automated pet feeders can remove the necessity of having to worry about feeding times. From using an application on your phone, you can feed your pet from across the country, change meal times or even how much they get fed. I know personally, they have been amazing at making sure my two kitties get fed at specific times.
That convenience comes with it a cost though. Many of these devices – feeders, smart plugs, smart fridges, smart washers, etc. – are built specifically to do a task that make your life easier with little regard to safety or security. Think about it. When a company sells you something like a pet feeder, they obtain the money you spent when you bought it. You’re not paying a subscription (yet anyway). You’re not providing anything else to the company to incentivize them to provide updates to software that sits on the device itself. Sure, there might be a bug fix if something doesn’t work as intended, but there is little reason for them to ensure the software is safe.
Fortunately, if you’re like most home users, the WiFi router you probably purchased generally protects you automatically from someone trying to get into your home network. That’s because many of these home routers default to deny all incoming traffic to your home. However, it’s still a device you can’t update like your computer, and it doesn’t get the attention like your iPhone does from Apple for security updates.
The other side of this is that while that router may protect *you*, the device can use you as a stage to attack others if it does get compromised. Stories of hackers being able to infect network-connected devices like this story about Bosch wrenches (warning it can get a little technical) highlight that things provided to make life easier also introduce risk. So, ask yourself this question, do you really need an Internet connected wrench or washer? If so, have at it. Just realize there’s a trade off in home security.