House Bill 1668 was introduced in the house in March of 2019 and signed into law in December of 2020 as Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2020 or the IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2020. You can read the bill at https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1668 it’s a pretty long way of saying “hey these IoT devices are computers.” But it certainly needed to be said.
Background
Grace Hopper developed the first standards for testing computers and programming languages for the Navy, protecting the government in the wake of rapid innovation. Those tasks are now handled by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the result is often guidelines on deploying computers into government locations. Companies and large enterprises then look to the NIST guidelines as the gold standard to secure devices, sometimes choosing to be more stringent or to let a few things go for the sake of useability. Let’s make no mistake that IoT devices are computers and should be treated as such with regards to securing them.
To read the full article I wrote, see https://www.bootstrappers.mn/post/house-bill-1668-innovation-and-the-state-of-iot-security