House Commerce Democrats Urge FTC to Reinforce Need for Strong IoT Cybersecurity

House Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and House Commerce Trade Subcommittee ranking member Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., urged the FTC Thursday to “strongly reinforce to both consumers and device manufacturers the need to adopt strong security measures,” after recent distributed denial-of-service attacks against DynDNS. The October problem caused outages and latency for multiple major U.S. websites (see 1610210056). It's time for the commission to strongly reinforce to both consumers and device manufacturers the need to adopt strong security measures, Pallone and Schakowsky said in a letter to FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez. “First, the FTC should call on IoT device manufacturers to implement security measures, including patching vulnerabilities and requiring consumers to change the default passwords on devices during the set-up process. Second, the FTC should alert consumers to the security risks posed by continuing to use default passwords on IoT devices.” Pallone and Schakowsky asked the FTC to immediately use all tools at the agency’s disposal to ensure manufacturers of IoT devices implement strong security measures, saying consumers sometimes don’t have the option to update their passwords from the default added by the manufacturer. Pallone and Schakowsky were among House Commerce members who earlier this week said committee leaders should hold a hearing on the attacks (see 1610310063). Industry lobbyists predicted the attacks would prompt a Capitol Hill examination of the cybersecurity of IoT-connected devices (see 1610260067).