Internet of things is the most promising technology at the moment. Each day I learn a new use case but today, I came across one of the best
Almost all the technology companies are working on IoT and are betting top dollars behind it. It is one of the most significant trends of this generation. The most apt saying for IoT is “Devil is in Details”. As we start to move beyond the hype and big forecasts, we start to face numerous challenges while deciding about implementing IoT. Here are five that stand out in particular.
Challenge: Data and analysis is the backbone of any IoT implementation. The Internet of Things brings an explosion of data, along with it security and privacy concerns as well. There is a big fear that the data might be misused for advertising or identify and individual or worse may fall into wrong hands. In a connected future, criminals get a lot more opportunities to attack companies and steal (digital) properties, commit fraud or blackmail organisations. Imagine if the terrorists are able to hack into the smart energy grid and bring everything to a halt by disrupting the power supply. IoT communications capabilities can become a two-way street, giving hackers a way into the organization while circumventing normal security protocols. Compounding the challenge, IoT security is notoriously weak, and there is no consensus for how to implement security at the device level. At the Black Hat security conference last year, security research students from University of Central Florida demonstrated how they could hack into Google’s Nest thermostat within 15 seconds, leading many commentators and experts to question what is being sacrificed in the name of convenience. The multiplicity of devices (things) leads to many more access points for the hackers to exploit (Gartner has predicted 26 billion units by 2020). The vulnerability of things is ever increasing but due to low memory on most of the devices, the network itself needs to be secured.
Potential Solution: The companies need to collaborate on data privacy issues instead of competition to have a greater level of trust and protection, e.g. AMD and ARM are collaborating on ARM TrustZone technology. A number of start-ups are coming up especially in consumer IoT and hence it is important that there is significant collaboration on data handling and the burden of data security is not entirely on start-ups. The IoT vendors need to be transparent in how they are handling sensitive customer data. The data also needs to be categorized as per the sensitiveness of the data and appropriate security measures need to be taken. The policy makers and the industry associations need to be stringent in penalizing any data breach. The policy makers should make strict rules while ensuring that the growth of IoT is not restrained.
Challenge: The IoT ecosystem is very fragmented with no dominant ecosystem, providers or technical model to set the industry standards. IoT, particularly in the consumer space has seen haphazard development due to proliferation of niche players.The space is getting crowed but the development is very silo’ed which means that parallel systems are emerging which may not necessarily talk to each other. Internet and telecom industries quickly developed standards that led to explosive growth in those two industries without too much of friction but the same cannot be said about IoT industry. Lack of standards complicates product development and industry growth. An example is the incompatible connectivity standards on devices like the Bluetooth, LTE Cat 0, ZigBee. Now if I am product developer, I would not be sure which standard to use from future compatibility perspective and would delay my decision. There are issues with the format of data getting generated as well. It is easy to have a smart building where the lifts, lighting and security are all integrated but imagine trying to integrate all different networks in a smart city.
Potential Solution: The industry associations need to come together and work on standards. Currently, there are at least four parallel standards (Thread, AllJoyn, Open Interconnect Consortium, Industrial Internet Consortium) that are being developed for IoT. This approach will not work and the only option is that the standards need to converge. Focus should be on interoperability so that the early investments are secure. In case of mobile operators, individual operators followed their own unique protocols until the GSMA standardized multiple consortium that led to widespread agreements on data center infrastructure, cabling, fiber‑optic color‑coding and other protocols. There is a need for an industry association (similar to GSMA for mobile operators) to define the standards. A few standards are there primarily in the area of M2M but it is barely scratching the surface.
Challenge: Cellular networks cover a lot more ground than they did even a few years ago, and 4G networks are expanding, but once you move beyond big metropolitan areas, you still can’t count on cellular. Now if there is huge amount of data that needs to be sent to a central location for analysis, the challenge is with the connectivity. This would mean that the devices need to have on-device computing. However, this makes the implementation harder and expensive apart from better battery performance requirements. Even integrating different “things” is a challenge as as they need to be connected to get the complete data picture.