2025-10-22 –, Europe
We all know that the S in IoT stands for Security. Despite years of bad press and high-profile breaches, Internet of Things devices continue to hit the market with glaring security flaws. Why do hardware teams fall short? Why don’t consumers seem to care? And what can be done to improve the situation?
This talk offers an IoT industry insider’s candid perspective on why the IoT industry treats security as an afterthought.
We’ll start with a review of the IoT landscape, drawing on input from experienced IoT developers in the consumer audio and toy domains as well as from IoT platform developers. We’ll examine the commercial and marketing pressures, the technical “best practices” and the obvious problems of time, money, and available talent.
Next, we’ll dive into a real-world case study: the design and development of a kids screen-free audio speaker developed by a Belgian IoT startup. We’ll explore key business and engineering decisions and their consequences.
Finally, we’ll look at where the IoT industry is headed, what it would take to nudge it in the right direction, and how the cybersecurity community can help.
Will Moffat co-founded Muuselabs, a Belgian IoT startup that developed a screen-free streaming audio speaker for kids. Before diving into hardware entrepreneurship, he was a software engineer at Google in San Francisco and a microelectronics researcher at IMEC Leuven. He holds a BEng in Computer Science and Electronics from the University of Edinburgh.