RTFM: How hard are IoT platform providers making it for their developers?

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) devices routinely have security issues, but are the platform designers providing enough support to IoT developers for them to easily implement security features for their platforms? We surveyed the documentation, code and guidance from nine IoT manufacturers to look at what guidance they provided for implementing three security features required by several security standards (secure boot, device identity keys and unique per device passwords). We find that more needs to be done to support developers if we want them to adopt security features -- especially in the face of incoming legislation that will require developers to implement them.