How to Respect Privacy in the Age of IoT
You’ve entered someone’s smart home, but refuse to be listened to by their personal assistant? Can you ask your hosts to turn their Google Nest or Alexa off?
You’ve entered someone’s smart home, but refuse to be listened to by their personal assistant? Can you ask your hosts to turn their Google Nest or Alexa off?
Speakers are everywhere, whether it’s expensive, standalone sound systems, laptops, smart home devices, or cheap portables. And while you rely on them for music or conversation, researchers have long known that commercial speakers are also physically able to emit frequencies outside of the audible range for humans. At the Defcon security conference in Las Vegas held recently, one researcher is warning that this capability has the potential to be weaponized.
The Internet of Things (IoT) industry is growing rapidly with the number of IoT-connected devices projected to surpass 20 billion by 2020. It’s an amazing number, but a number that wouldn’t be possible without the concurrent growth and availability of WiFi and cellular. However, even with all this growth, industry leaders don’t believe existing WiFi and cellular capabilities can keep up with IoT’s trajectory.
The infrastructure around the world becomes more connected each day. We can thank the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) for this connectedness, which stretches far beyond fitness bands to connecting machines and devices in industries such as transportation, manufacturing, healthcare, construction and more.
Given the Internet of Things’ perch atop the hype cycle, IoT trend-spotting has become a full-time business, not just an end-of-the-year pastime. It seems every major – and minor – IoT player is busy laying out its vision of where the technology is going. Most of them harp on the same themes, of course, from massive growth to security vulnerabilities to skills shortages. In addition to the IoT blurring the lines between IT, which runs the customers’ systems and email, and OT, which runs the technology behind the production systems, here is what will drive the IoT in the next year.
The Internet of Things vision can become a reality – but only if companies approach IoT strategically, tying all of this data from multiple core systems together. The hard reality is that most IoT projects don’t make it past the pilot stage, as they languish in isolation and drown in data collected but never analyzed or used.
Internet of Things is increasingly infiltrating our lives not only at work, but also in our homes with people continuing to buy and install all kinds of smart devices in their houses. Yes, it is handy to have a device open you the front door because it has somehow recognized that your hands are full, and more importantly – that it is in fact you coming up. However, as per usual, the less money, skill and preparation you invest in the devices and building your IoT network, the more problems you can expect down the line.
read more
Companies that dare to build an in-house IoT network for the first time often make a grave mistake in underestimating how complex it will be, not only in terms of design, but also operation and management. On top of that, legacy network technologies and engagement models are still not able to support the requirements of large-scale IoT systems either, making things even harder.
read more
Building an in-house IoT network is a long and difficult process which can endanger the company if not done right. The thing that gets most companies to miss a step is considering the complexity of the network – the more complex it is, the more there is to worry about. And it is certainly a job on a massive scale for any company, small or big. That is why it is important to consider a variety of things before embarking on this journey. Take a look at our new infographic to see just some of the questions you need to ask yourself before starting to build an IoT network.
We live in an exciting new world, don’t you think? Relying on tech more and more, we are able to get places faster, be in contact with people far away, work from home (or the beach, if you are feeling adventurous) and have all the information as soon as we want it. Simply put, we are connected. We are all present in cyberspace through our own or someone else’s doing – thank the people who don’t ask for permission before posting pictures with you online. But how safe is all that connectedness – if that even is a word? Do you ever wonder to what degree the evolution of the Internet of Things endangers people and what is to expect next? Well, there is only so far into the future we can look into, so let’s see what the predictions for 2019 are.
© 2017 Awontis. All rights reserved.