A Global Puzzle: Integrating Iot Jurisprudential Approaches

While devices in the Internet of Things (hereinafter "IoT") such as smart appliances, smart watches, and pacemakers are intended to make life easier and safer, they sometimes complicate users' lives with system failures and expose them to new risks instead. Users suffer the risks stemming from hastily developed cybersecurity in IoT devices, sometimes with serious consequences and without recourse against manufacturers or cybercriminals. Cybercriminals' ability to exploit gaps in cybersecurity from anywhere makes the IoT especially risk-prone to transnational crime and may make tort claims against multinational manufacturers tenuous on issues of causation and actual harm suffered. Most problematically, the IoT represents an underdeveloped area of law that courts and legislatures in many countries have attempted to address with vastly differing approaches. In turn, this patchwork of underdeveloped IoT jurisprudence leaves manufacturers without clear standards to follow and consumers without adequate paths to pursue remedies. Though ambitious, multilateral international collaboration is necessary to set uniform standards for the ubiquitous issues associated with IoT cybersecurity.