Digital wearables can expose users to cyberattacks

Subject: Science and Technology

Section: Awareness in IT

Digital wearables, smartwatches and fitness trackers pose unique threats to the security and privacy of customer data.
By connecting a wearable to an extended ecosystem, one is exposing a larger attack surface.
Cybersecurity experts look at this as a supply chain that includes a data generator, an analytics engine and a service provider.
Each link in the chain, including the connecting networks, presents a potential risk.
Most criminal intrusions of computer networks have a financial motive. That may lead people to conclude that wearables have a low cybersecurity risk.
But wearables data, especially in healthcare settings, is often tied to financial information.
Depending on the organisation from which it was obtained, stolen health data can be extremely valuable because it often includes so much personally-identifiable information – including birthdays, email addresses and other login information, that can be used for identity-theft purposes.
The wearables market in India had clocked a record-breaking, double-digit growth in the first quarter of 2022, with shipments surpassing 13.9 million devices.