IoT = Internet of Things
We have heard our mothers worry about whether they turned the lights off before leaving the house, and even taking a detour from their daily routines to adjust the thermostat in order to save a few dollars on the monthly bills. Now, how many times have you heard someone say, “There’s probably an app for that”?
Being able to remotely control things at home from anywhere spares us a huge piece of mind. How convenient is it these days that you can simply press a button to turn your home appliances on or off, or even adjust their settings, from the comfort of wherever you are on your smartphone? We are familiar with the term “Smart Technology” where the machines and tools seem to have evolved to suit our high-tech lives, and the recent leap in the development of cloud technology brought a boost to the business. Now we hear about “Smart Gardens”, “Smart Kitchens”, and gadgets that are “Smart” or that make other things smart all around us. Besides enjoying the convenience of this amazing technology, how often do we ponder on the potential future of the technology?
How about taking it another step further to a wristwatch that monitors your vital signs and vitamin levels and alerts home system to adjust the conditions at home and plan your dinner automatically as you are returning home from work? The experts are predicting the possibilities of more things getting “Smart” ended up in our very near future, and when they say more things, they mean pretty much EVERYthing. And the eventual goal? Further automation of things, possibly almost everything.
Internet of Things, IoT abbreviated, is a big picture of any objects or organisms that are connected through the Internet, preferably via Wi-Fi. All of these “Things” are identifiable with its own unique IP (Internet Protocol) address, and the interconnected net of different devices can collect, monitor, and process the data to make certain decisions according to its settings, alarm for abnormalities, and some even repair or substitute parts on its own. It can be used to find more efficient and productive ways for all things involved to work at its best, and eventually with less of direct human involvement. It could be between different devices or systems of different machines, or even between an organism and professionals through simple connecting hardware. These embedded simpler form of computers also have evolved throughout near 20 years of development of the technology and they have gotten more sophisticated and much smaller so to fit in basically anything.
The interest in IoT has grown rapidly in forms of connected cars, smart homes, and wearables in recent years. The experts are expecting at least 50 billion objects and software for them to be IoT, or be “Smart” by 2020 and McKinsey Global Institute has reported that the IoT has a total potential economic impact of $3.9 trillion to $11.1 trillion a year by 2025. When there’s 50 billion “things” that will generate data and communicate with each other electronically, it brings up a big issue of a data breach or physical malfunction due to hacking. Recent news has revealed how baby monitors in your baby’s crib, smart TV in your living room, and POS systems are being hacked. These are not the usual computer systems we are more used to hearing getting hacked, but when they all contain some form of smaller and basic form of computers and are connected to the internet, they became hackable. As more things get connected, more doors are open to the access of things, and therefore, more locks are needed. If you are wondering why getting a baby monitor hacked can be something to worry about, it is because the criminals can use the device to acquire the access to a bigger system. Have we been blinded by the gold mine that we are forgetting to check on the gates?
Finding the rules and regulations is very important as anyone can simply purchase the hardware to add connectivity to their products, but not everyone has the experience in Internet security. If we neglect this imminent issue, every data the new technology generates can easily be used against us, as the criminals can hack into our home monitoring system to learn when we are away on a holiday, send copies of important documents to your competitor when you are making simple photo copies, or scream profanities at your sleeping babies through your baby monitor. While we are dreaming of Smart Cities and possibly the whole world connected as one, we need to keep our focus as equally on the security.
We certainly do not want the terrorists to burn our toast or leave our laundry wet in the dryer.
