Insurance

The IoT Comes To Chicago: IoT World Forum

The Internet of Things is increasingly an industry unto itself, with the conferences to prove it. And “no,” I’m not just talking about The Security of Things Forum – Security Ledger’s own IoT and security show. (Videos from our first annual show are now available, by the way. Register to view them here.) No: there are forums and symposiums focused on all different aspects of IoT: smart cities, design, wearables, and so on. There’s O’Reilly’s Solid, GigaOm Structure and any number of smaller, regional events. I’m at one of the more prominent IoT shows this week: The Internet of Things World Forum (IoTWF), which is sponsored by Cisco Systems. I’m moderating a really interesting panel that addresses a critical issue: the ways in with information technology (IT), operations technology (OT) and consumer technology (CT) converge in the IoT. These are three areas that, until recently, were separate. But a variety of developments […]

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Cyber Insurance Is Sexy

So bland is the insurance business perceived to be, that it’s the stuff of Hollywood comedy. In the 2004 film Along Came Polly, Ben Stiller played a skittish, risk averse insurance adjuster with actuarial data on bathroom hygiene at his fingertips (no pun). Woody Allen famously depicts his hapless criminal Virgil Starkwell locked in solitary confinement with an eager insurance salesman in the 1969 mocumentary Take the Money and Run. Cruel and unusual punishment, indeed. Boring though they may be, insurance markets are incredibly important in helping society manage risks of all sorts. Insurance markets also have a funny way of shaping behavior – both personal and commercial – in ways that serve the public interest. Take the response to Hurricane Sandy as just one example. Law makers in Washington D.C. may never agree on whether that storm was a product of a warming climate. In fact, they may debate the […]

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Survey: Consumers Growing Wary of Information Sharing

A survey by the business information service Lexis Nexis finds that consumers have grown more wary of programs that ask them to share data in exchange for improved services or other offerings. Editor’s note: LexisNexis has clarified that its survey was released in August, 2013, not October, 2013. The story has been corrected to reflect that information. – Paul 6/4/2014 The survey of  2,072 consumers, aged 21 to 74, was conducted in October 2013 by LexisNexis Risk Solutions. It found consumers were more wary of sharing information online, including at social networking and online banking sites than they were three years earlier. “Consumers are less comfortable with information sharing than three years ago,” the survey concluded. The survey was released in concert with Telematics Detroit 2014, a conference focused on information systems used in vehicles. It was designed to measure consumers’ awareness of- and interest in so-called “use based insurance” (or UBI) – sometimes referred […]

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Internet of Things Interactions

IoT And Big Data To Create Insurance Industry Winners, Losers

This blog writes a lot about risk and the Internet of Things. Specifically: we talk about how smart, sensor rich, connected devices create all kinds of new risks for enterprises and consumers. It goes without saying that feature development (and adoption) are running well ahead of pesky issues like secure design and deployment or data privacy. Smart companies are trying to put some brakes on that trend. (Witness Google prohibiting sensitive health data from its Android Wear platform.) But, by and large, companies are plowing ahead into IoT technologies without a lot of consideration of the risks. But there’s one industry where risk _is_ the business: the insurance industry. And there, the thinking about the potential of Internet of Things is decidedly bullish. In fact, a recent report from the financial services research firm Celent (paywall) suggests that broad adoption of IoT technologies will revolutionize the way insurance companies market and sell to […]

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The French Disconnection: Radio Gun Stops Smart Cars In Their Tracks

You could call it “The Death of the Car Chase.” According to the BBC, a UK company, E2V is demonstrating the RF Safe-Stop, a 350 KG (770 lb) device that can shoot RF (radio frequency) pulses at moving vehicles,  “confusing” the vehicle’s electronic systems and causing its engine to shut off, stranding both vehicle and driver. E2V’s Safe-Stop product is intended for use as a non-lethal weapon for the military and law enforcement and is marketed as a tool for “checkpoint enhancement,” “convoy protection” and “vehicle immobilisation” (sp). According to this BBC report, the device acts like a small radar transmitter, directing a beam of radio pulses (identified elsewhere as L and S-Band RF pulses) that saturate the wiring that connects the vehicles on board systems. Those pulses confuse the engine control unit and cause it to reset, stopping the vehicle. Safe-Stop sends a continuous stream of pulses to keep the ECU confused […]

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