The Hidden Costs of Neglecting Security Early in IoT Design

In the race to get connected products to market, security is still too often left for last. By the time a device is fully designed and prototyped, it can be incredibly expensive — and sometimes impossible — to retrofit strong protections.

This “security as an afterthought” approach isn’t just risky. It creates long-term costs that grow exponentially the further down the development lifecycle you go.

Why Late-Stage Security Fails

When security is bolted on after a product is built, the fixes typically add overhead without solving the root problems. I’ve seen companies scramble to patch around fundamental design flaws: insecure storage, missing update strategies, or unverified trust models. None of those are easy to fix once devices are already manufactured.

“Research from IBM’s Systems Sciences Institute shows that fixing a defect in production can be up to 100 times more expensive than resolving it during design.”

Reliance on third-party code is another blind spot. Many IoT devices are built on free SDKs, open-source libraries, or even full software stacks. If you lack visibility into how those components are maintained or whether they contain known vulnerabilities, you’re building on unstable foundations.

And then there are the update strategies. Even when devices support over-the-air updates, I often find there’s no real enforcement of update integrity. Devices continue to function even if the update fails, leaving products in the field running outdated and vulnerable firmware.

Real-World Oversights

In penetration tests, I frequently uncover issues that slipped through because security was left too late:

• Comments left in code that reveal default passwords.
  
• Root credentials hard-coded during production and never removed.
  
• Debug ports like UART or JTAG left exposed, giving direct access to the device’s root shell.
  
  

One test in particular comes to mind: the device had strong encryption, hardened communications, and an apparently secure design. But when I connected to an unprotected UART port, I bypassed all of it and dropped into a root shell in minutes. The product team had done excellent work in many areas, but overlooking that one interface undermined everything.

Why It Matters

Every shortcut, every overlooked step, every “we’ll fix that later” adds up. The true cost of ignoring security early isn’t just financial, it’s reputational. A single exploit in the field can undo years of development, erode customer trust, and even lead to regulatory penalties.

Building Security In From the Start

The smarter approach is to integrate security into product design from day one. That means:

• Performing threat modeling early in the design process.
  
• Vetting third-party components and libraries.
  
• Establishing secure update strategies with enforcement.
  
• Locking down debug interfaces before shipping.
  

With the right tools, like software bill of materials (SBOM) management and binary analysis, it’s possible to identify and mitigate these risks before devices ever leave the lab. It’s far more efficient — and far less expensive — to fix vulnerabilities upstream than to scramble after release.

Learn More

See how Finite State helps manufacturers build security into connected products from the start.