Google is trying to make your smart home safer

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How are you supposed to shop for a smart device?

Here in the reality of 2018, IoT security remains a big bag of unknowns. Manufacturers will introduce connected appliances without clear statements of how long they’ll get bug fixes — even though these things, if used like the non-connected sort, will stay in service for decades.

Even answering basic questions about security features in an allegedly-smart device seems too difficult for some companies, while government regulation has been patchy and sometimes slow to respond to clear failings by firms. One reason: It’s hard to know that a device without a screen or a user interface of any sort has been hacked.

That can lead to a certain willful ignorance or learned helplessness. “I don’t think that consumers are quite thinking about security yet,” observed summed up Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with Creative Strategies.

Various third parties are trying to get a sense of the problem. For instance, Underwriters Laboratories is developing its own cybersecurity labeling program, Consumer Reports (disclosure: I occasionally write there as well) has begun testing connected devices for privacy and security, and a group of researchers at Princeton University is building a database of IoT security.

Things to know about Android Things

With Android Things, Google hopes to give developers and customers more than just vague assurances. This platform is built on Google-certified chipsets from such manufacturers as Qualcomm (QCOM) around which those companies can build smart devices. Then it adds a secured and stripped-down version of Android, on which developers can write apps using standard Android tools.

Google promises a minimum of three years of security fixes for each major release. That itself is well short of the lifespan of a thermostat or an LED bulb; Google hasn’t said what the maximum period of update support would be for Android Things, but it’s definitely not just three years. The developer blog post announcing this platform’s 1.0 release notes “additional options for extended support.”

Devices running this platform have been emerging since January — see, for example, the Lenovo “Smart Display” that Lenovo introduced then at CES, or the LG smart speaker shipped last month. But Android Things’ role went unadvertised until Google formally announced this effort on Monday.

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During a keynote Wednesday morning, Android Things project-management lead Vince Wu said Android Things would soon show up in additional Google Assistant-based smart speakers and Smart Displays—and would work for everything from connected doorbells to point-of-sale terminals. Note, however, that Google’s own Nest thermostats don’t yet run on this platform.