Forbes Technology Council Members Outline Steps to Reduce Cyber Risks on Connected Devices

Members of the Forbes Technology Council have outlined steps to reduce cyber risks across connected devices and services. The recommendations focus on everyday exposures that can accumulate when devices, platforms, and services are added without sufficient oversight.

Christy Wyatt of Absolute stated that organizations should continuously verify whether security controls remain operational, noting that agents can fail silently and configurations can drift. She added that self-healing automation is needed as AI accelerates attacks.

Anil Pantangi of Capgemini America Inc. said shadow APIs that link legacy systems to new AI agents are often overlooked. He recommended automated discovery and schema validation at the edge, along with zero-trust treatment of internal connections.

Seemant Sehgal of BreachLock Inc. said both businesses and consumers remain unprepared for AI-enabled threats and called for faster, automatically deployed patches once exposures are confirmed. Margarita Simonova of ILoveMyQA advised turning off unneeded data sharing on smart devices and deleting accounts for devices no longer in use.

Kiran Bhujle of SVAM International Inc. said machine-to-machine API calls often operate on inherited trust with little oversight. He recommended extending zero-trust authentication to every device connection. Dima Gutzeit of LeapXpert stated that work moving into messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Signal, and WeChat creates an attack surface without enterprise protections.

He suggested extending governance and monitoring to these channels.

Diptamay Sanyal of Crowdstrike said default credentials on IoT devices remain a common risk because many devices cannot be patched. He recommended credential rotation and firmware validation before any device joins a network. Govinda Rao Banothu of Cognizant Technology Solutions said unsecured firmware in IoT devices can be exploited at scale.