standards

At Electronics Bash, FTC Chairwoman Calls for Privacy, Security on IoT

  The Wall Street Journal reports on an address that FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez gave to the folks out at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas. From the report: “Ramirez outlined several concerns including ubiquitous data collection, or the ability of sensors to collect sensitive personal information about consumers all the time and in real time; unexpected uses of consumer data, such using individual energy use patterns to set their homeowners’ insurance rates; and cybersecurity threats. “She also noted opportunities. ‘Whether it’s a remote valet parking assistant, which allows drivers to get out of their cars and remotely guide their empty car to a parking spot; a new fashionable bracelet that allows consumers to check their texts and see reviews of nearby restaurants; or smart glucose meters, which make glucose readings accessible both to those afflicted with diabetes and their doctors, the IoT has the potential to transform […]

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Have we been wrong about the Internet of Things all along?

I’m just slogging through all the articles I marked “to read” but never got around to during the relax-o-frenzy that is the holiday season. One of the better ones I’ve found comes from the Web site Techbitzz.com. On December 31, they ran a nice and succinct write up that addresses one of the most confusing nomenclature problems in the technology world today: the differences between “machine-to-machine” (or M2M) technology and the “Internet of Things” (or IoT). As the article notes, the tendency these days is to just conflate “M2M” and “IoT” – as if the latter is just a newer, cooler term for the former. But that’s not the case. In fact: the two terms refer to very different things. According to the article: “M2M can be defined in simple terms as, ‘Machines’ (can be a sensor, meter, valve etc)  using network resources (can comprise of core telecom network, back-end […]

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Intel’s New IoT Platform Emphasizes Security

Intel unveiled a new Internet of Things platform this week dubbed (surprisingly enough) the “Intel IoT Platform.” The goal is to provide a unified platform for connecting diverse and distributed connected things. Given Intel’s big investment in security with the purchase of McAfee, its no surprise that security is a big part of the “value add” for the IoT platform. Intel says that its IoT platform promotes interoperability of network, operational technology and information technologies. The IoT Platform envisions  Intel Quark™ to Intel Xeon, and Intel-based devices, gateways, and datacenter solutions with hardware-based root of trust. With hardware enabled identity and secure boot features, Intel believes that you can eliminate a wide range of malicious attacks and compromises. Intel’s IoT Gateway devices are based on its 2009 acquisition of WindRiver. They also wrap security intelligence from Intel’s acquisition of McAfee.  Specifically, Intel has embedded anomaly and intrusion detection and prevention capabilities in […]

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2015 is Apparently Not The Year for IoT Standards

CIO has an end-of-year, “crystal ball” interview with Gartner analyst Kristian Streenstrup and Forrester analyst Tim Sheedy on how the Internet of Things is likely to mature and change in 2015. Her high-level thoughts: Applications and use cases for the IoT continue to grow, but progress towards cross-industry standards will not keep pace. (We wrote about whether its already too late to have real standardization in IoT here.) To the extent that there is movement towards IoT standards, it will come within specific industry verticals, with the backing of major firms (like GE) or at the tip of a regulator’s pencil, Streenstrup says. Consumer adoption of IoT will be “slow,” argues Forrester’s Sheedy. Why? No surprise – poor interaction and connectivity. “It’s still a one app- one device model,” Sheedy says, underscoring a problem that gets back to the standards question. Read more via Where is the Internet of Things heading in 2015? […]

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Has the IoT Standards Train Already Left the Station?

The Harvard Business Review has an interesting blog post from last week that looks at the effort to develop standards and promote RFID (Radio Frequency ID), a kind of Ur-technology for our current Internet of Things. Writing on the HBR blog, Thomas Davenport and Sanjay Sarma note that the effort to develop RFID standards, led by MIT’s Auto-ID Labs, provides a possible model for the development of cross-vendor standards for the Internet of Things. However, the authors caution that it may already be too late to achieve consensus on standards to govern Internet of Things communications, given the heavy investment of large and wealthy technology companies in the standards process. One of the most successful elements of the RFID standards effort, which developed and promoted the EPCGlobal standard, was close collaboration between academics, technology vendors and end users.End users of the RFID technology – notably retailer WalMart, Procter & Gamble and […]

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