Fortifying the connected edge: How Shield-IoT secures smart connected devices

“These devices are crucial to many of the services and infrastructure that modern society depends on,” he says, “but in many cases, there’s poor security in place, and they’re much more vulnerable to attacks that can lead to personal and sensitive data loss and downtime of critical services.”

Today, the scale of the challenge can no longer be ignored. With over 5 billion cellular-connected IoT devices operating outside the enterprise perimeter, edge-based attacks have become one of the most damaging threat vectors. With 53% of critical infrastructure organizations reporting severe IoT security incidents, these mass-scale connected edge networks are under attack.

Moreover, as new data privacy and cybersecurity regulations are introduced and enforced, organizations must continuously monitor their network and take actions to avoid massive fines and even personal liability for the chief information security officer and C-level executives.

“We were surprised to discover the extent of the risk organizations are facing,” Solomon says. “For example, while working with one of the largest EV charging service providers in Western Europe, we discovered that 5% of its devices had been compromised, with over 10,000 cases of data theft detected — including personally identifiable and credit card information.”

It isn’t that the manufacturers of such IoT devices deliberately design them to be vulnerable. Rather, they are subject to what Solomon calls the cellular IoT paradox: While the customer such as a merchant, enterprise or an IoT service provider owns the devices, it doesn’t own the 5G or cellular network that connects them, which belongs to the telecom companies or other connectivity service providers. As a result, customers can see only the device communications directed to their control centers, while all other traffic, including any interactions between an attacker and the device, remains invisible. And, as Solomon puts it, “You cannot protect what you cannot see.”

Determined to close this security and visibility gap, Solomon decided there needed to be a way to increase security while enabling a friction-less customer experience. In 2023, Shield-IoT launched its AI software security platform, providing AI asset visibility, threat management and compliance across any cellular connected device or application, at an unlimited scale of billions, enabling organizations to seamlessly implement cybersecurity best practices in one day.

“It’s frictionless, customers don’t need to install anything on the device itself or make any changes to their network,” Solomon explains. “It’s an agentless, software-as-a-service, no-hardware, cloud-based solution. The solution doesn’t even require any integration efforts or configuration by the customer.”

This frictionless “magic,” as Solomon puts it, lies in Shield-IoT’s partnership with the telecom companies that own the cellular networks. They provide Shield-IoT with access to the device-to-cloud non-sensitive network traffic statistics, which Shield-IoT analyzes in real time to detect the first signs of unknown cyberattacks and operational anomalies before any damage can take place.

Powered by patented anomaly detection and agentic-AI security, the self-learning platform enables faster threat detection and response at mass scale. Shield-IoT acts as an automated cybersecurity expert, transforming billions of raw cellular network logs into trusted, network-wide insights — including affected devices, impact, actionable regulatory violations, and recommended mitigation actions.

This level of visibility fundamentally changes how organizations understand and secure their connected devices.

“We actually give customers access to their own live networks for a month to see for the first time what’s going on,” Solomon says. “Then they can decide if they want to use the solution or not.”

The strategy works: Today Shield-IoT’s adoption rate is 80%.

Mastercard — uniquely positioned at the crossroads of payments, IoT and security — and increasingly concerned about the risks posed by unsecured IoT devices, particularly among its telecom partners, began collaborating with ShieldIoT in 2024. They developed a new, highly scalable mobile security solution, Mastercard IoT Security, which is already being deployed with several telecoms, giving these organizations full visibility into their networks, early detection of security threats and operational anomalies, and the ability to meet compliance regulations.

Last year, Shield-IoT also became part of the first cohort of Mastercard Start Path’s Security Solutions track, which supports innovative cybersecurity startups. Solomon’s participation in Start Path has helped his company grow. With the assistance from Mastercard, Shield-IoT has been able to partner with more cellular networks, onboard and monitor millions of devices, and expand its range of service, he says.

“Our target as a company, together with Mastercard, is to become the category leader in cellular IoT security and ultimately ensure that the ecosystem, and first and foremost payments, is secured and meets compliance regulations,” Solomon says. “The value for the telecom provider or connectivity service provider is a unique value-added service on top of connectivity that drives revenues and creates differentiation. The value for the end customer is a frictionless service.”