The Top 10 IoT Security Tools

Armis’ Agentless Device Security Platform enables businesses to identify, monitor, and secure all managed and unmanaged assets in their environments. The agentless platform leverages your existing infrastructure to identify all assets—including IoT devices—in your environment, classifying them by device type, manufacturer, and model. One discovered, Armis conducts real-time risk and vulnerability assessments, generating reports on real-time device behavior. Admins can compare those reports with crowdsourced baselines to help identify malicious activity. When a threat is detected or a policy violated, admins can choose from a variety of in-built response options, including quarantining devices.

Armis’ Agentless Device Security Platform is cloud-based, and easy to deploy, without the need for additional hardware installations. It’s also easy to manage, thanks to its intuitive web-based interface, responsive customer support, and the Armis University, which offers on-demand product training. Because of this, Armis is a great option for SMBs and enterprises looking for an effective yet easy-to-use IoT security tool. Its agentless scanning makes Armis a particularly strong solution for organizations using IoT devices that don’t have the computational capacity to support traditional agents, or are sensitive and may crash as a result of a security scan.

Asimily is a comprehensive IoT security platform that specializes in medical and laboratory devices. The platform discovers IoT devices and classifies them using over 100 attributes. It also provides insights into the relationships between devices, including which devices are communicating internally or externally, and over which ports and protocols. Asimily creates a baseline of expected behavior for each device, before scanning them in real-time for misconfigurations, attacks, zero-day vulnerabilities, and anomalous behavior.

When it detects issues, Asimily’s forensic analysis module can analyze all traffic to and from devices to identify the root cause. The platform also carries out simulations to understand how an attacker could exploit found vulnerabilities. It provides a risk score that indicates which vulnerabilities need immediate remediation, based on criticality and likelihood of exploitation. Finally, Asimily enables admins to carry out risk assessments on devices they’re considering purchasing and recommends secure configurations and device hardening practices to help prevent threats before they materialize.

Asimily offers cloud, on-prem, and hybrid deployment options, enabling it to integrate with most infrastructures. The platform offers in-depth insights into the security status of IoT devices and provides valuable recommendations on how to remediate issues and prevent future threats. Overall, we recommend Asimily as a strong tool for healthcare organizations looking to monitor and secure medical equipment.

AWS IoT Device Defender is Amazon’s IoT security management solution. With AWS IoT Device Defender, admins can configure security controls such as authentication and authorization. The platform continuously audits the security posture of IoT devices to identify deviations from these controls, such as the use of devices and protocols with known security weaknesses, and unauthorized access. The platform also uses machine learning to analyze historical device data, enabling it to identify anomalous behavior such as credential abuse or unusual spikes in connection attempts. AWS IoT Device Defender alerts admins to suspicious activity via their preferred AWS console, and admins can take in-built mitigation actions such as updating certificates or quarantining devices.

AWS IoT Device Defender has a user-friendly interface and intuitive alert system, which notifies admins about any security issues or policy deviations in real-time, enabling them to mitigate threats quickly and effectively. It integrates seamlessly with AWS’ other IoT tools, including IoT Core, which collects security metrics, and IoT Device Management, which enables admins to remotely troubleshoot devices, e.g., deploying patches or rebooting—to provide comprehensive IoT management and security capabilities. Overall, we recommend AWS IoT Device Defender to small and mid-market organizations, and particularly those already leveraging other products in AWS’ security stack.

Azure Sphere is an IoT security tool that enables businesses to secure and manage their existing IoT devices, as well as build and secure new smart devices. Azure Sphere monitors connected devices for vulnerabilities and indicators of compromise. If it detects an issue, the platform reports it to admins via its cloud-based analysis system. The platform automatically rolls out patches and updates over-the-air. Azure Sphere also enables device authentication by linking device identities to their hardware so they can’t be impersonated by a remote attacker. Additionally, the solution supports passwordless authentication via digital certificates and signed tokens, reducing the risk of device compromise.

A cloud-based solution, Azure Sphere is quick to deploy within any cloud environment—not just Azure. It should be noted that the platform’s powerful capabilities do come with a learning curve; as such we recommend Azure Sphere for mid-market organizations and large enterprises with IT resource that’s experienced in IoT management. Its support for creating new devices also makes Azure Sphere suitable for organizations looking to build their own smart devices to meet their specific use case, or manufacturers of smart devices looking to provide their customers with added security.

Entrust IoT Security is a tool designed to protect IoT and OT devices by applying machine and user identity management. The platform assigns each IoT device a unique digital identity, based on a secure, encrypted public key infrastructure, which enables each one to be authenticated before establishing a connection with the wider network. Entrust IoT Security also offers end-to-end encryption between IoT devices and the cloud, ensuring the integrity of data collected by IoT sensors, and offers on-demand, over-the-air software updates to minimize the risk of vulnerability exploit.

Entrust IoT Security deploys relatively quickly and easily in the cloud, and can scale to cover any number of devices. The platform provides high-performance, comprehensive identity and vulnerability management for IoT devices, while still being easy to use. Overall, we recommend Entrust IoT Security for mid-market organizations and large enterprises looking for a way to securely authenticate, update and remotely patch their IoT devices.

Forescout continuously secures and ensures the compliance of all managed and unmanaged devices on a network—including IT, IoT, and OT devices, following zero trust principles. The Forescout Platform automatically discovers all devices as soon as they connect to the network and classifies them according to device function and type, OS and version, and vendor and model. The platform then automatically segments devices based on this classification, enforcing least-privilege access to ensure devices can only access areas of the network they need, and minimizing the lateral movement of threats. Forescout then continuously monitors devices for vulnerabilities (e.g., outstanding software/hardware updates or weak credentials), as well as assessing their communication and activity patterns for high-risk behaviors.

The Forescout Platform is a very intuitive solution. It provides complete visibility and protection, while still being easy to navigate and manage. The platform is also highly scalable, having been proven to support over 2 million devices and scale over a thousand locations. Because of this, we recommend Forescout to mid-market organizations and larger enterprises looking to secure a large IoT device fleet—among other assets—in line with the principles of zero trust and least privilege.

Microsoft Defender for IoT enables organizations to identify, manage, and secure their IoT and OT devices. The platform uses agentless network monitoring to identify and inventory IoT devices, along with information such as their protocols, communication, and backplane layouts. Once inventoried, the platform uses IoT-aware threat intelligence, machine learning, and behavioral analytics to identify vulnerabilities and behavioral anomalies in real-time. When vulnerabilities are discovered, Microsoft Defender for IoT prioritizes them according to risk, highlighting the most likely attack paths that could lead to a compromise.

Microsoft Defender for IoT can be deployed easily on-premises, in a hybrid environment connected to Azure cloud, or as a fully cloud-managed platform. The platform is easy to manage, and offers integrations with Microsoft 365 Defender and Microsoft Sentinel, as well as other third-party SIEM, SOAR, and XDR tools, enabling organizations to unify their IT and IoT threat intelligence feeds for ease of management and reduced noise. Overall, we recommend Microsoft Defender for IoT as a strong solution for any sized organization looking to secure the IoT device fleet, and particularly those already using 365 Defender or Sentinel.

Vantage is Nozomi Networks’ combined IoT and OT security management platform. The platform automatically discovers and visualizes all IoT devices and their relationships with one another, with the option for admins to drill down into contextual data such as IP and MAC address, type, serial number, firmware version, and components. Vantage continuously monitors devices to assess and prioritize risks and vulnerabilities, and presents its findings in graphic reports. The platform offers behavior-based anomaly detection and signature-based threat detection, and pre-defined playbooks to help guide remediation efforts in the event of a security issue or breach. These include suggested solutions as well as an explanation of possible causes, to help prevent a repeat incident.

Vantage offers built-in integrations with other third-party IT and security tools, including SIEM, ticket management, asset management, and identity management solutions. The platform supports a broad range of IoT and OT protocols, and delivers comprehensive visibility into those devices once deployed. The platform is intuitive and navigable, with a highly graphical interface that makes it easy to find specific information quickly. Overall, we recommend Nozomi Networks’ Vantage as a strong IoT security tool for any sized organization looking to delve deep into their IoT security data.

Palo Alto Networks’ Enterprise IoT Security solution enables organizations to implement zero trust security principles across their IoT devices. The platform automatically discovers all IoT devices and uses ML technology to profile them, with details such as type, vendor, model, and over 50 other attributes. Enterprise IoT Security then monitors all devices 24/7 for Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) and abnormal behavior so that admins can quickly identify and investigate malicious activity and compliance deviations. Enterprise IoT Security also enables admins to segment their IoT from the rest of the network with granular segmentation policies that prevent attacks from spreading laterally. These include least privilege policy recommendations to speed up policy creation.

Enterprise IoT Security is cloud-delivered, making it quick and relatively easy to deploy across any architecture without the need to make changes to the network. The platform integrates seamlessly with Palo Alto Networks’ other cloud-delivered security services for coordinated threat intelligence and protection, including malware and web threat protection, vulnerability remediation, and the triggering of their next-gen firewall (NGFW) for dynamic threat isolation. As such, we recommend Palo Alto Networks’ Enterprise IoT Security for mid-market and large enterprises, and particularly those already utilizing Palo Alto’s NGFW or Prisma solutions.

Verizon’s IoT Security Credentialing solution enables organizations to ensure that only trusted and authenticated IoT devices can connect to their network and access corporate resources. The platform offers bulk provisioning of security credentials to IoT devices to ensure maximum security on deployment, as well as on-demand provisioning when needed. When a device wants to access the network, the platform validates its certificate to ensure that only authentic firmware, applications, and configurations are granted access. IoT Security Credentialing also offers embedded data encryption to protect IoT device data.

Verizon’s solution is easy to implement and easy to manage, with strong technical support and product documentation available. The platform focuses on credentialling, rather than vulnerability management; as such, it doesn’t offer the threat detection capabilities of some of the other solutions on this list, but it manages device authentication and data encryption very well. As such, we recommend Verizon IoT Security Credentialing for small and medium-sized businesses looking for a user-friendly yet capable IoT authentication and encryption tool.