The director of the Jersey Cyber Security Centre has questioned whether so many household and commercial appliances need to be connected to the internet at all.
The remarks follow the attacks in which dozens of European supermarkets had their freezers driven above 50C — a story this site has followed from the first French incident through to the British meat suppliers caught in it.
What he actually said, which is narrower than the headline
Matt Palmer was careful. He said he was not suggesting people should unplug their devices, but that he would "challenge whether everyone needs a connected fridge".
That distinction is worth preserving, because the advice that usually follows an attack like this is either useless ("be vigilant") or impossible ("disconnect everything"). Palmer is doing something more specific: asking what the connection is for, device by device.
The question the industry has not answered
Smart appliances now include fridges, central heating, toasters and washing machines. For some of those the connection has an obvious purpose. Heating you can turn on before you get home saves money and is the reason people buy the thermostat.
For others the purpose is harder to state. A connected fridge mostly offers notifications, a screen, and the ability to be told remotely what temperature it is. Against that sits a permanent network-facing computer in your kitchen, built by a manufacturer whose expertise is refrigeration, supported for as long as that manufacturer chooses, and replaced on the fifteen-year cycle of a fridge rather than the three-year cycle of a phone.
That last point is the one most often missed. The security model of consumer electronics assumes regular replacement. Appliances are not replaced regularly. A fridge bought today will still be running in 2041, long after anyone is issuing updates for it.
What the retailer said
Mark Cox, chief executive of CI Coop, said its supermarkets had security controls in place in case of cyber threats.
That is the expected answer and not a dismissive one — the European attacks did not hit every chain, and the ones with segmented networks and controllers off the public internet were not the ones making the news.
Why this reaches a Bangladeshi kitchen too
Connected appliances arrive here through importers rather than through a regulator, and often as the cheaper models, which are the ones least likely to receive security updates at all.
Palmer's question travels well because it costs nothing to ask and does not require technical knowledge: when you are offered a connected version of something, what does the connection do for you? If the honest answer is a notification you would not miss, the feature is a liability you are paying extra for.
A test you can apply in a shop
Palmer’s question becomes practical if you turn it into three. What does the connection let the appliance do that it could not do otherwise? Would you notice if that stopped working tomorrow? And can the appliance still do its main job with the network switched off?
That last one is the important one. A washing machine that will not wash without a server is a different purchase from one that merely offers an app. The first makes you dependent on a company continuing to run a service for the fifteen-year life of the machine. The second you can simply ignore.
Where the honest answer to the first question is “tell me the temperature I could read off the door”, the feature is not worth a permanent opening into your home network.
