The future has arrived. Connected appliances, vehicles, household devices, security systems, lighting and entertainment, heating and air conditioning, wearables, medical devices and more dominate our world with increasing tenacity. Our lives are becoming more automated, smarter and remarkably convenient, and getting more so every day. Whether you think you want this or not, it’s here to stay. It is known as the Internet of Things, or IoT.
Chances are, you’re already using something that falls into this category. The IoT network of sensors and connected devices is the fastest growing phenomena since mobile. Its humble beginnings reflect a desire to make people’s lives easier, but it’s traveled far beyond Star Trek-era automatic doors and food dispensers to include buildings, factories and soon, entire cities.
The origins of IoT
While we see many consumer products in IoT, its origins can be traced to the manufacturing sector. Round about the year 2K, an organization called the Auto-ID Centre was founded, originally with the purpose of investigating what technology was going to follow the barcode. The endgame was to put an electronic tag on every item in the world, and to be able to control these things in the most economical way possible. By leveraging information stored on an RFID (radio frequency identification) tag, this suddenly became possible. It became a way to build an identity into an object which could then be detected by a scanner or receiver; this particular protocol is still widely used in the retail industry for inventory control purposes.
From barcodes to a Networked Physical World
The advent of RFID tags revolutionized the way a huge sector of industry controlled their inventory. It eliminated the need for certain personnel, and reduced the ‘human error’ factor to a large degree. Eventually, this expanded into manufacturing itself, as robotic machines, conveyors and pickers streamlined warehousing processes. It was at an Auto-ID Centre presentation in October of 2000 that the term “the Internet of Things” was first coined. It was dubbed so by Sanjay Sarma, David L. Brock and Kevin Ashton, who went on to publish a paper on it, called the Networked Physical World.
In it, they described a single system for networking all physical objects, and outlined its value over and above having numerous, smaller connections. They also described the architecture required to run it. Some of the key findings included:
- A highly interoperable system, independent of all platforms
- Having a tag that is low-cost and not required to do much, in other words, a low-performance item that was cheap and worked with the architecture of the system
- The architecture system should be adaptable to change long after it has been installed
Many of these tenets describe current IoT devices rather well. Internal chips dictate a set number of actions and responses, and we send commands, either from our smart devices, a remote control or from a code that is accessed by the device itself – an example of which might be an automatic coffee machine that reads electronic bar codes to determine a beverage recipe, or to trigger a foaming action, for instance.
The birth of consumer smart devices
Probably the biggest obstacle to progress in IoT was that before 2000, dial-up was still the most common way to connect to the internet. Dial-up wasn’t able to deliver on the promise of a cheap connection, and so it took a while for full infiltration to take hold. Once wireless broadband and residential WiFi became more common, the playing field opened up for all kinds of smart devices to appear. It started with networked consumer electronics like game consoles, cameras, and appliances, and grew to include industrial applications, such as tracking devices, self-driving vehicles, security systems, drones, and more. Industries that include global shipping and logistics, energy companies, and meditech have come to rely heavily on IoT technology – in fact, you might be surprised to know that many high-tech medical devices are connected. There are pacemakers, for example, insulin pumps for diabetics, and devices that read vital signs and connect instantly to a physician if there is an anomaly – suddenly, IoT is no longer just a tool of the modern home, it is a vital technology that can save lives. Its array of applications, its complete permeation of our daily existence is just a little extra proof that we are living a sci-fi reality.
IoT and you
Earlier incarnations of IoT were limited to high-end appliances that could connect to the internet. Now, it’s quite common for almost every type of device. In case you have failed to notice the IoT devices in your life, have a look around. Does your thermostat connect to the internet? Can you control it from a smartphone app? How about your car starter, or garage door opener? Your security system, whose cameras you can view on your phone, your pet camera, your color-changing smart lighting system, your smart TV, your remote door locks, your printer, the list goes on. Whatever you may have thought about IoT, it’s as much a part of your life as it is a part of the world at large.
This is due, in no small way, to the wider availability of cheap and highly available cloud infrastructure. This allows IoT devices to collect and distribute their information, and to store the data they collect at a very low cost. Most devices don’t even have to store information, they are just processing commands from you to the device, and information from the device to you. However, there is a limit to most things, and network availability is no exception. Currently, most IoT devices run on an unlicensed network that is largely unchallenged, but with the FCC’s recent approval of LTE-U technology for cellular customers, this may become an issue. Currently, it remains to be seen whether this will have any noticeable effect, but we will probably know more when the first LTE-U enabled devices start hitting the stores this fall.
IoT security controversy
Tucked in amongst the IoT disruption we are currently experiencing is one of the biggest threats to internet security and privacy so far seen in the history of cyberspace. With global adoption of any new thing, it is always expected that there will be mistakes made, and IoT is no exception. Since IoT devices often tap into very personal information, and sometimes provide a window directly into your private life, vulnerabilities exist from which would-be thieves can exploit. There are many ways in which they accomplish this, and many different reasons why. First, there is access to one’s personal network, which, once hacked, can provide a gateway to all sorts of information. Identity theft, credit card fraud, and grievous invasions of privacy have happened on so many levels that it remains a serious concern. More ambitious cyber-thieves have discovered a way to take control of thousands of personal networks, all accessed through unprotected IoT devices, to launch a full-scale DDoS attack against major corporations. They establish a botnet, through which they flood the servers of their target company with malicious traffic with the intent of shutting them down.
The good news is, there are easy ways to protect yourself:
Always purchase IoT devices made by manufacturers you trust.
Avoid purchasing and using IoT devices that have a factory password that you can’t change, or those that have no password.
Change your password immediately after purchase.
Turn on the ‘auto update’ feature, if it’s available. This will ensure you always have the latest security patches.
Only communicate with the device over a secure connection. Avoid public WiFi or unauthenticated networks.
Put the device on its own dedicated network, if possible. This will minimize the damage to the rest of your network if there is a breach, and will keep your personal devices separate.
Keep in mind that your Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant is set to “listen” to your voice, so what you say “in private” might not be so private after all.
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