An interesting article by Jen A. Miller from CIO.com:

If 2015 was the year of the Internet of Things, 2016 could be the year of the hacked Internet of Things. That could mean a lot of headaches for CIOs, whether they’re fans of these new devices themselves or will be dealing with employees connecting them at work and managing the potential security exposure that brings.

“The issue to date is that devices are vulnerable just by the fact that they exist and can connect to the Internet,” says Jerry Irvine, member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Cybersecurity Leadership Council and CIO of Prescient Solutions. “Anybody can get to a device if you don’t secure them properly.”

One of the reasons why it’s a big hacker target: It’s, well, big. Gartner estimates that 6.4 billion connected things will be in use by 2016, up 30 percent from last year. They also predict that 5.5 million new things will get connected every day.

That’s a lot of possible portals for bad players to get in.

Read the rest here.