Smart homes of today—with lights, refrigerators, and Alexa all talking to each other—aren’t nearly as smart as they need to be to thwart virtual burglars from breaking in. To address the massive security threat to interconnected devices known as the Internet of Things, or IoT, Johns Hopkins University and six other institutions are embarking on an effort to fortify vulnerable points of entry against hackers.

The five-year program to develop trustworthy devices and best practices and principles is funded by a $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation and has been dubbed SPLICE, the Security and Privacy in the Lifecycle of IoT for Consumer Environments.

As the smart home market expands rapidly into a more than $53 billion worldwide industry by 2022, Johns Hopkins computer scientist Avi Rubin, a co-principal investigator for SPLICE, said the effort is sorely needed because so few industry standards have been established. Read more at The Hub,