Some notes on privacy and data in the online era.
Well first, what is IoT (Internet of Things)?
In this day and age, everyone is on the internet. In fact currently there are almost 5 billion active internet users all across the word, and that number is forecasted only to increase. All of these users are sharing data and information amongst each other, thousands of terabytes at an given moment. The Internet of Things is all of this data, and all of these devices communicating and sharing information. By using all this open information we can accomplish some incredible things.
The futuristic potential of IoT
One of the currently growing trends involving IoT is the existence of so called ‘Smart homes’ or homes that are designed to be integrated into the internet and ‘smart’ devices. These smart devices allow the home to be controlled wirelessly and sometimes without the user even being near the house. Some examples of this are devices like the Phillips Hue, which are IoT enabled light bulbs that allow the owners to wirelessly and instantly change the lights throughout the entire house via a mobile app the user installs onto their mobile devices. As more and more innovations have come out, such as the Amazon Alexa (an IoT Voice assistance comparable to Siri), or the IoT air conditioning controllers, and even some home security systems like the Ring ecosystem, our homes are becoming more and more integrated into the Internet. These integrations of the internet and smart devices into our lives are only beginning and the possibilities of what will happen within the next decade are infinite. Some publishers at IEEE are even exploring the idea of smart cities, where the entire city is being monitored and controlled via smart devices and data.
Concerns with the future of IoT
Concerns involving data used in IoT, One of the core aspects powering IoT is the amount of data being communicated at any given time between connected devices. In fact in some cases, a companies entire revenue may come from the data its generating from its users. Many people and organizations are expressing concerns about storing sensitive user data and information as what happens if a bad actor gets ahold of this data? Quite often users give sensitive information to IoT such as (but not limited to) home addresses, first + last names, age, and other important personal information that could potentially be dangerous in the wrong hands. All to often do new articles and stories come out of data leaks occurring in major companies, sometimes even government agencies are infiltrated by hackers and information is leaked. A recent example of this was in 2019, when hackers broke into the National Revenue Agency of Bulgaria and released millions of citizens personal information to the local public.
Unfortunately data privacy alone is not the only common concern that is holding back to potential of IoT. Security is another major concern, because all of these devices are internet capable and connected to each other, they are vulnerable to hackers attempting to use these devices in a harmful way. If a smart device is not properly secured it can be hacked, imagine a hacker with ill intentions breaking into your home security system. They could easily look on your cameras to watch what you are doing or even worse they could take advantage of their control and break into your house knowing that you aren't home to do anything about it. In fact this has already happened before, here Geekwire covered a story where a few hackers broke into a Ring camera and used it to harass 3 children that the ring was supposed to help protect.
What is preventing IoT from being implemented everywhere?
Besides the established concerns of data privacy and technological vulnerabilities that could allow hackers to use IoT in a harmful way, there are a few road blocks hindering global adaptation of IoT.
The idea of Internet of things is still a new innovation. In fact one of the main problems preventing wide spread adoption of IoT is that because IoT is so new, some companies are not sure how to go about getting involved. Nothing involving data or communication of this scale has never happened of this scale before and the Internet is still sort of a wild west when it comes to new technologies.
The current usages of IoT
Along with the previously mentioned ‘smart home’ applications of IoT, there are already plenty of wide spread applications involving the Internet of Things.
One of the first and biggest adopters of IoT was actually the manufacturing industry. IoT is extremely advantageous in manufacturing as it allows factories to automate a note worthy number of processes with very little human interference. For example, production of products can automatically be changed to produce less or more depending on market trends without needing anyone to manually tell each machine to stop producing. With all of these machines talking together it is really easy to stream line the process of manufacturing a product, rather than having to manually pass something through different processes the machines can simply handle the transfers automatically. This cuts the number of human interaction needed and also the time required to complete a task, overall increasing the efficiency of the entire operation. Since less human interference is needed when working with big machinery it also increases the safety factor of these facilities. These IoT enabled manufacturing facilities are sometimes called ‘Smart factories’.
Another prominent example of IoT changing the way we solve problems today is in the agricultural field. Farmers are using the Internet of Things to help streamline their processes and maximize their potential yield through technology. Farmers are able to consider factors that effect plant growth such as weather, humidity, sunlight, and more. They can then use this data to change things automatically for their farms.
In Conclusion
IoT is a very powerful concept with the potential to improve the lives of everyone around the world but it has a few road blocks to overcome; data, privacy and manipulation concerns. It has already seen impressive success amongst several industries and implementations such as consumer products (Smart homes/devices), agriculture and manufacturing (Smart factories). With the success of IoT we could enter a futuristic era of smart devices helping control and improve our day to day lives. Making our lives safer and easier.
Sources used
https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6740844
https://gdpr.report/news/2019/07/16/hacker-causes-mass-data-breach-in-bulgaria/