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Nest, Samsung and AMD Back Thread For Home Automation

A week that has already been full of standards news for the Internet of Things added more with the unveiling of Thread, a proposed communications standard backed by Google’s NEST group that promises a “new and better way to connect products in the home.” Google was joined by Samsung, Freescale Semiconductor, ARM, smart lock maker Yale Security and Big Ass Fans (favorite company name ever) in forming The Thread Group to promote Thread. In a press release on Tuesday, the group said that the Internet of Things presents unique challenges that are not well met by existing wireless communications technologies such as Wi-Fi, ZigBee and Z-Wave. In contrast to those technologies, Thread focuses exclusively on network connectivity, not application-layer exchanges and connection management. Thread Group says existing application protocols and IoT platforms can easily run on Thread networks. Specifically, it uses 6LoWPAN (IPV6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks) to create 802.15.4-standard mesh networks of smart […]

Yet Another IoT Standards Group: This One For Privacy

Data privacy firm TRUSTe announced that it is forming a group to identify technical standards to ensure consumer privacy in the Internet of Things. Speaking at the Internet of Things Privacy Summit in San Francisco last week, Chris Babel, the CEO of TRUSTe said that the multi-party group will draw up “technical standards to help companies develop the privacy solutions that are needed to protect consumer privacy in the Internet of Things.” [Read Security Ledger’s coverage of privacy issues related to the Internet of Things here.] The group, dubbed the IoT Privacy Tech Working Group will include representatives from TRUSTe as well as online privacy groups The Center for Democracy & Technology, The Future of Privacy Forum and the Online Trust Alliance, according to a statement from TRUSTe.   IoT privacy tech working group announced. “This working group will work to address the mounting security and privacy concerns, while promoting transparency and user […]

Samsung Research America

Report: Samsung Investing In IoT Security

South Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co. said on Tuesday that it will invest heavily in security for the Internet of Things sector, citing security for IoT as a ‘key future technology’ alongside energy storage and harvesting.   The report on Tuesday, from South Korea’s Yonhap News Service said Samsung, currently the world’s top maker of mobile phones, said Samsung is soliciting proposals on IoT security algorithms and protocols through the end of June. Possible applications include “biometrics, smart structures and advanced traffic networks,” according to Yonhap. The announcement comes by way of Samsung’s Future Technology Fostering Center, a research group that the company established last year to help keep it on the cutting edge in technology. According to published reports, Samsung has pledged 1.5 trillion won ($1.34 billion) over 10 years to fund the Center. Approximately 750 billion won ($670 million) will be allocated to research projects through 2017.

Security Iris Scanner on Blue Human Eye

WSJ: Samsung Looks To Iris Scans To Secure Mobile Devices

Min-Jeong Lee has an interesting article over at The Wall Street Journal Digits blog on how mobile device maker Samsung is looking to expand its use of biometric sensors in mobile devices beyond the finger-print scanners that are now the state of the art. According to the article, Samsung is considering “various types of biometric [mechanisms]” in addition to fingerprint scanners. Samsung’s senior vice president Rhee In-jong told analysts and investors at a forum in Hong Kong on Monday that iris scanners are a top consideration. “One of things that everybody is looking at is iris detection,” Rhee said. The biometric features are part of Samsung’s enterprise-focused mobile software, dubbed “Knox.”According to Rhee, only a small portion of some 80 million Samsung devices that shipped with the Knox software, which provides additional security functions for use by businesses, such as hardware based “TrustZone” technology to isolate sensitive data, virtualization for data- […]

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Heartbleed Prompts Fiscal Lifeline For Open Source

One of the most powerful (and substantive) realizations to come out of the news about the ‘Heartbleed’ OpenSSL vulnerability was that open source projects need help and attention from the tech community that relies on their fruits. I’ve written about this before – noting Apple’s reluctance to put some of its considerable cash hoard towards supporting open source projects it relies on (like the Apache Software Foundation), as have others. [Read Security Ledger’s coverage of the Heartbleed vulnerability here.]   Now that idea appears to have taken root. On Thursday, the Linux Foundation announced the creation of the Core Infrastructure Initiative, a multi-million dollar project to fund open source projects that are in the critical path for core computing functions. The CII group has some substantial backing. Google, Cisco, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, IBM, Intel, Samsung, Fujitsu and VMWare all signed on to the CII Steering Committee. (Surprising (or not): Apple was not one of the firms supporting […]