Security will make or break the future of IoT
People must feel safe and secure with the IoT, the Internet of Things before it can reach its full potential – and there are a lot of things that still need to be addressed, Greenwave Systems’ chief scientist and technology evangelist Jim Hunter warns
Speaking at Web Summit, Hunter said security is the single biggest hurdle when it comes to monetizing the Internet of Things (IoT), particularly in the wake of incidents like last month’s Mirai DDoS attacks.
Calling on his extensive experience in connected technology and his recent efforts as co-chair of the IoT Consortium committee on privacy and security, Hunter called for a fundamental consensus within the industry on security standards.
“When you’re looking at how to monetize, you should find the value in what makes people tick – consumers want to be safe, secure and have their basic needs met,” said Hunter. “From that perspective, the value is in shoring up the bottom line and the smart home has its roots in security for that very reason.”
Hunter – who took part in a panel titled “Are Smart Homes Overhyped and Risky?” at Web Summit today – went on to say that the IoT must meet basic security standards and safeguard consumer trust to continue to grow.
“Once those basics are met, people will want to create and connect,” he said. “If you look at social media, Facebook wouldn’t have been successful in the early days of the Internet if people didn’t feel safe and secure. That’s what we as an industry have to do with the IoT. There are a lot of aspects that need to improve before we can move on to next level.”
According to Hunter, while the size of the IoT is unprecedented, the concepts behind it are nothing new.
“The Internet has been about ‘things’ the whole time – be it a computer, a mobile phone or a smart device – so you have to look at how we have monetised the Internet so far and provided value to the consumer,” he continued. “The PC industry, for example, didn’t fully take off until software enabled people to be more creative, productive and better connected. The mobile industry was the same – there were a lot of walled gardens until Apple created the App Store.
“We went from millions of opportunities with the PC industry to billions of opportunities with mobile, and from complicated, large-scale applications to smaller, more digestible solutions. The Internet of Things is a continuation of that, but with trillions of devices.”
As the Chief Scientist and Technology Evangelist at Greenwave Systems, Hunter is responsible for overseeing the technology, architecture and innovation of Greenwave Systems’ award-winning AXON Platform®. He is a highly regarded technologist with multiple patents and is a well-respected thought leader, author and speaker, propelling the world toward a smart, connected future.
Greenwave Systems is a global Internet of Things (IoT) software and service company dedicated to empowering market-leading brands to profitably deploy their own managed services and products, foster deeper customer relationships and grow their businesses. Mobile carriers, telecommunications operators, semiconductor manufacturers, utilities and all manner of service providers use the Greenwave AXON Platform to safely integrate data and communications from a variety of existing and emerging digital protocols and swiftly create vanguard IoT and M2M services via managed networks with real-time analytics.
Unlike vertical applications built to a narrow set of specific use cases, AXON Platform is horizontally built and modular by design, scaling to connect a broad and ever-expanding range of device-powered, real-time data. As the IoT ecosystem evolves, AXON Platform extends—and so can your managed IoT services. With the AXON Platform, IoT language barriers are a thing of the past. Data from devices and services with disparate protocols (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ZigBee, Z-Wave and more) are all translated into the same, standard IP-based language, leveraging a powerful automation engine to connect the widest variety of IoT devices from the widest variety of vendors. AXON Platform acts as an on-ramp for new IoT devices and services, empowering our partners to create, deploy and maintain innovative new revenue-generating applications with speed and certainty. Our IoT platform enables operators around the world to monetize their networks quickly for the connected future, reduce complexity, and simultaneously address security, flexibility and scale.