Computer security is tricky. Just ask America's Office of Personnel Management: on July 9th it admitted that hackers had purloined the sensitive personal information of 22m government employees. Or Anthem, a big insurance firm which reported in January that 80m customer records had been stolen. Or the National Security Agency, which in 2013 suffered the biggest leak in its history when Edward Snowden, a contractor, walked out with a vast trove of secret documents. Unfortunately, computer security is about to get trickier. Computers have already spread from people's desktops into their pockets. Now they are embedding themselves in all sorts of gadgets, from cars and televisions to children's toys, refrigerators and industrial kit. Cisco, a maker of networking equipment, reckons that there are 15 billion connected devices out there today. By 2020, it thinks, that number could climb to 50 billion. Boosters promise that a world of networked computers and sensors will be a place of unparalleled convenience and efficiency. They call it the "internet of things".
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