The Internet of Things (IoT) is continuing its unstoppable march into private homes: be it robot vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, cookers or washing machines — more and more household appliances are able to offer smart functions by connecting to the Internet. At their most basic, these features allow you to control appliances via apps or voice assistants; they extend to checking the contents of your refrigerator with your smartphone from the supermarket; and they can even suggest recipes from the cloud, which then appear on your cooker's display in real time. And they are only just getting started.

In view of the rapidly developing market and increasing variety of innovative smart home applications available, it is not really possible to define a universal way of tackling potential malware infections at the moment. That said, the home router is the element that connects most smart household appliances to the Internet. This means routers are a major target of cyber attacks on IoT appliances. At the same time, routers and other networked appliances infected with malware can be misused as a tool for perpetrating further cyber attacks, for example, by adding them to a larger botnet. It is therefore all the more important to follow the BSI recommendations on protecting your smart home — so your networked appliances do not become infected in the first place.