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Bosch Creates Internet of Things Business Unit

Robert Bosch GmbH, the world’s largest automotive supplier, said it has created a new business unit specifically to focus on so-called Internet of Things technologies. The company is launching a new division, Bosch Connected Devices and Solutions, that will manufacture a range of electronic products and software to connect remote devices. Among the innovations the new division will focus on are sensors and sensor-based applications for use in home and for transportation and logistics, according to a company press release.  Bosch has put its weight behind the Internet of Things, using marketing muscle and checkbook to fund IoT research and popularize IoT technologies and the potential for connected devices to revolutionize industries from transportation to agriculture. In a press release, company CEO Volkmar Denner said in a press release that the company expects 6 billion “things” will be connected by 2015,” (though some estimates already put the number of connected devices […]

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Target Confirms Massive Breach – 40 million Credit Cards Affected

Black Friday just got a bit more black. Target Corp., one of the U.S.’s leading retail outfits, confirmed in a statement Thursday morning that reports of a massive breach of the company’s payment infrastructure, resulting in the exposure of data on an estimated 40 million credit and debit card accounts. The statement, released on Target’s website, follows media reports on Wednesday citing reports from leading credit card issuers. In it, the company confirmed “it is aware of unauthorized access to payment card data that may have impacted certain guests making credit and debit card purchases in its U.S. stores.” According to statements by Target, the credit card data was stolen between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15, 2013 and includes customer name, credit or debit card number, and the card’s expiration date and the CVV, or three-digit security code. Shoppers at the company’s U.S. stores were affected, but the breach did not affect Target’s Canadian […]

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Two Faces of the IoT: A Conversation With Xively’s Philip DesAutels

Conversations about the Internet of Things often focus on its most visible outposts: consumer devices. Products like the Nest Thermostat, IP-enabled home security cameras or Samsung’s Smart TV are like ambassadors for the IoT: highlighting cool features and capabilities that just hint at the transformative power of the much larger revolution that small, powerful Internet-connected objects will herald. The truth is that although consumers are still warming to the Internet of Things, businesses and industry have already embraced it. Manufacturers of heavy equipment have outfitted their products with an extensive mesh of small sensors that provide close to real-time data on the functioning of critical components. As a measure of this, Virgin Airlines said in March that it will upgrade its network infrastructure to accommodate an “explosion” of data from a new fleet of Boeing 787 Jetliners, which will produce close to half a Terabyte of data per flight. But what is […]

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How Connected Consumer Devices Fail The Security Test

The Internet of Things leverages the same, basic infrastructure as the original Internet – making use of protocols like TCP/IP, HTTP, Telnet and FTP. But the devices look and act very differently from traditional PCs, desktops and servers. Many IoT devices run embedded operating systems or variants of the open source Linux OS. And many are low-power and many are single function: designed to simply listen and observe their environment, then report that data to a central (cloud based repository).   But IoT devices are still susceptible to hacking and other malicious attacks, including brute force attacks to crack user names and passwords, injection attacks, man in the middle attacks and other types of spoofing.  Despite almost 20 years experience dealing with such threats in the context of PCs and traditional enterprise networks, however, too many connected devices that are sold to consumers lack even basic protections against such threats. […]

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Thingful is a Facebook for Smart Devices

The data on exactly how many Internet of Things devices will be online by the end of the decade is a matter of debate. Cisco famously put the number at 50 billion by 2020, though Morgan Stanley thinks it could be as high as 75 billion. The analyst firm IDC estimates the number at 50 billion. But others have put the number lower. Gartner puts the number of connected things at around 30 billion by 2020. We might all be better off taking a cue from McDonald’s and just start using the phrase “billions and billions” by the end of the decade. As with McDonald’s hamburgers – the exact number doesn’t really matter, so long as everyone agrees that it’s going to be big. Really big. But all those devices – and the near-limitless IPV6 address space that will accommodate them – do present a management and governance problem: how […]

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