With smart home automation on the rise, we’ve seen significant growth in the demand for intelligent home security systems, with devices such as the smart doorbell, alarms and other motion sensored cameras now becoming commonplace in the market. As many of us are aware, one of the primary reasons consumers purchase smart home automation is to keep their families safe. Given that many smart home devices are now connected to the internet, security and privacy are often perceived as primary obstacles. Therefore, to overcome these obstacles, manufacturers are continuously exploring new software and technologies to ensure they’re kept safe. Thankfully, both security and functionality are now at the forefront when devices are being built today.

When considering the risk factors associated with smart home automation, they’re often categorised into two segments – internal and external. Internal factors are things that can be controlled by manufacturers or home owners and external factors are things that cannot be controlled, such as power outages and cyber threats like online hackers. These hackers are opportunists that are trying to take advantage of a device flaw to gather data and profile their targets better. The good news is that these types of attacks take a lot of time and effort to set into motion and with the increases in technology and security measures, they’re becoming increasingly difficult to achieve.

Unlike computers that more or less run widely used operating systems, smart home automation devices have a much more fragmented environment. Attacks on a set of smart home devices cannot be easily replicated on a different set from a different manufacturer. Some hacks also require attackers to physically buy and tamper with samples of their target devices before they can actually proceed to attacking their intended targets. Knowing this, people should not be afraid of using their smart home devices; they just have to learn to use them wisely and make sure their security systems are in place.

With all this in mind, we will continue to see increased efforts in data encryption and authentication of physical security, as well as at home security systems with biometric intelligence to recognise faces, voices and thumbprints. Given the adoption of in-home security, smart doorbells, intruder notifications and sensors, we will also see a growing trend towards video and audio analytics, as well as a stronger push towards keeping devices safe from cyber threats.