Showing posts with label IoT. Show all posts

5G and IoT: The Future of 5G Communications

Due to the speed, massive capacity and super low latency of the Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband network, the potential for technological growth is vast. Find out how 5G Ultra Wideband and IoT can work in tandem, as well as how 5G technology is expected to impact business overall.

5G and IoT: The Possibilities

5G is important to the Internet of Things because of the need for a faster network with higher capacity that can serve connectivity needs. The 5G spectrum expands the frequencies on which digital cellular technologies will transfer data. This wider spectrum available for use increases the overall bandwidth of cellular networks, allowing for additional devices to connect.

Another area where 5G Ultra Wideband could impact the Internet of Things is enhancing virtual and augmented reality (AR/VR). 5G Ultra Wideband’s ultra-low latency can improve the AR/VR experience, and opens possibilities for such technology in business, education and elsewhere.

5G and Business IoT

5G-enabled IoT is expected not only to enable technological growth; it is also projected to help support 22 million jobs around the world. This job growth is expected to come from the digitization of transportation, agriculture, manufacturing and other physical industries. Consider also construction sites, mines, oil derricks and freighter fleets: these industries would benefit greatly from ultra-fast data transmission to the time-sensitive nature of their output.

5G has the potential to drive advancements in smart machinery as well as smart manufacturing. Thinking even bigger, 5G could enable IoT to run virtually instantaneous traffic analyses, improve security and public safety and possibly enable remote surgery.

(Verizon)

Brazilian healthcare CIOs plan IoT boost

A boost in investments around Internet of Things (IoT) technologies is expected for the next two years in healthcare in Brazil despite the challenges faced by the sector, according to research.

According to the study carried out by Frost & Sullivan in partnership with Brazilian Association Health CIO (ABCIS), there is a growing interest in IoT as a means to enhance clinical decision making among technology heads in the country's hospitals and other healthcare service providers.

Currently, only 8 percent of the healthcare chief information officers (CIOs) reported IoT technologies are in place at their organizations. However, 70 percent of those polled plan on introducing the technologies to their portfolios within the next two years.

However, there are challenges involved. Despite the clear advantages that technology innovation can provide in healthcare, the Frost study suggests that CIOs in the sector struggle with extremely tight budgets.

About 58 percent of the CIOs in healthcare organizations in Brazil manage budgets ranging between 250,000 to 1 million reais ($63,000 - $252,000), with operating expenses being often greater than capital expenditure.

Almost half of the study participants (47 percent) report insufficient budgets is their biggest hurdle to innovation, though nearly 80 percent expect their budgets to increase.

Technical difficulties were also mentioned in the study, relating to areas such as digitization, the adoption of electronic patient record platforms and system interoperability.

The study covered 101 chief information officers across Brazil, of which 23,8 percent operate in the public sector while the remaining works for private organizations.

(ZdNet)

Making IoT Data Valuable

We’re reminded almost daily about the great opportunities and possibilities the Internet of Things bring to the table. From railroad sensors that help prevent catastrophes to smartwatches that help us stay fit, more than 150 IoT devices get connected to the internet every second. But the data generated from IoT devices is only valuable if users can effectively analyze it, and performing that analysis presents its own set of challenges related to security, variety and volume.

Data generated by IoT ecosystems will always be at risk – as the number of connected devices increases in organizations, it becomes more difficult for companies to keep security threats at bay.

Also, each connected device will create its own type of data. Getting value from it through traditional analytics encompasses a challenge on its own since most BI tools in the market have been designed to process structured data or to analyze data blanketed by proprietary semantic layers.

While implementing semantics on top of data is important, it has the potential to generate data chaos – each team within an organization will have different business interpretations of the same data, forcing analysts to spend more time reconciling results from different tools than gaining insights from their data.

Additionally, storing the massive amount of data generated by IoT devices calls for flexible and scalable cloud object stores. While object storage is a compelling solution due to its minimal cost, it’s not something that BI tools can easily connect to. As a result, many companies aren’t properly harnessing this data. Companies looking to unleash the value of IoT data need to take a holistic approach to act upon the opportunities that IoT brings across the entire business, as part of a transformation that relies fundamentally on analytics.

Regardless of the nature of the industry, to fully unleash the value of IoT data, companies need to develop operations around the following elements:

Harness and Capture the Right Data

Generating and capturing the right data for your use case is the first step to creating a successful IoT ecosystem. Depending on the use case, data needs to be managed and combined with other meaningful data such as customer, product or sales data, as well as environmental data. Processing these sources of data to gain valuable insights can only happen through a variety of analytical methods ranging from basic statistics all the way to sophisticated techniques such as machine learning.

Make Data Consumable

Temperature data, humidity data, heart rates and logistics and tracking data, are just a few of the many types of IoT data that are often kept in cloud object stores such as Amazon S3. Buried in all that noise is the potential for amazing insights to drive quality, lower costs and improve operations outcomes.

Data-driven companies in every field are analyzing data looking for insights on how to improve their quality of products, increase service quality, reduce production downtime, increase sales and much more. But to accomplish this, the first step is to put useful data into the hands of analysts and BI consumers. And right now, IoT data, due to its volume, variety and the speed at which it’s generated, isn’t easily consumable. Whether it’s a dataset for consumer tracking, noise levels or sales analysis, it takes weeks or months to just get data, before analysts can begin processing it.

Organizations using IoT data can accomplish an unlimited amount of innovative goals by getting their hands in the correct data at the perfect time. However, the process of building a proper data lake, ingesting data into it, curating it and securing it to make sure it lands in the right hands, is a complex and slow one. Many BI and data science tools currently in the market provide the means to easily analyze data, but to provide a real self-service experience, organizations have to make data easily accessible by curating it and properly cataloging it so consumers can find it.

While the quality of data and the insights obtained from it are highly valuable assets, one of the most important practices is to integrate IoT data into existing workflows and processes such as operations management systems for logistics and transport companies embedding insights into existing maintenance dispatch systems to prevent operations downtime, or hospitality and entertainment companies embedding customer behavior IoT data into sales and marketing operations systems to enhance consumer and visitor experience.

Organizations need to take a deep look into everything that’s encompassed in their current architecture and define a way to integrate their existing technologies with their newly implemented IoT devices. The results from this kind of data blending can result in optimized lead generation processes, enhanced pricing and user experience and better machine efficiency and less downtime in production operations.

Data-as-a-Service

Data-as-a-Service puts together technologies needed to simplify the process of retrieving data from disparate sources, such as transactional databases, local files and cloud stores. This vision not only helps to deliver valuable data to users in a timely and secure manner so they can start mining their data looking for clues to improve business decisions, but it also reduces the amount of grunt work that analysts need to perform before they can consume data.

Being able to make prompt business decisions on current data is key to succeed in competitive markets. Data-as-a-Service provide a self-service model that enables data consumers to explore, organize, describe and analyze data regardless of its location, size or structure, using their favorite tools such as Tableau, Python and R in a matter of minutes, while data engineers can dedicate their time to ensure integrity, security and governance without causing any delays in the data consumption process.

Embrace Open Source

In data analytics, the future is open source. Infrastructure based on open source delivers a number of benefits to enterprises, including faster development cycles (building on the work of the community of open source contributors), more secure and thoroughly reviewed code and no vendor lock-in.

For example, data infrastructure built on Apache Arrow allows enterprises to leverage the benefits of columnar data structures with in-memory computing providing dramatic advantages in terms of speed and efficiency.

(IoTForAll)

Brewery Uses AI And IoT Technology To Improve The Quality Of Beer

Artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT) are becoming more prominent in the food and beverage industry. In a recent interview, Joe Vogelbacher, president and co-founder of Sugar Creek Brewing, shared how AI and IoT are helping his company.

Founded in 2013, Sugar Creek Brewing crafts Belgian-inspired ales for North Carolina and beyond. The company is veteran-owned and a certified independent member of the Craft Brewers Association. It has integrated AI and IoT into its brewing process to improve manufacturing and the quality of its beer.

"We hosted IBM at our facility for a training event, and they were discussing some work they had been doing with some other companies. When we learned about how they were using visual inspection to determine if certain products were good or bad, we wondered if they could do the same thing for beer," Vogelbacher says.

Sugar Creek Brewing had a significant problem as it packaged the finished beer into bottles. The fill levels were not consistent, and in some packaging runs, they ended up with excessive foaming. The foaming translated to waste and excessive dissolved oxygen in the beer. Too much oxygen in the beer ruins the quality of the flavor and reduces the shelf life. The spillage problem cost them $30,000 per month.

"We presented this problem to the engineers at IBM, and they installed a camera, which takes pictures of our beer as it exits the bottle line. This picture when combined with other data we collect during bottling operations then gets uploaded to the IBM cloud and interpreted by the Watson algorithms. Our brewers provide some specific criteria, which they find useful, and Watson looks for that needle in a haystack of data. Quick interpretation of large amounts of data has turned our company from being reactive in many circumstances to proactive and able to better pinpoint process improvements. This translates to a better quality product in our customer’s hands, which has always been our mission since day one," Vogelbacher shares.

As one of the older breweries in Charlotte, Sugar Creek Brewing operates some historical equipment as well. When they started this project, one of the first things they did was to install some precision sensors at various points in the brewing process. These sensors collect data 24 hours per day about the brewing operations.

"If you look at any of the sensor’s data in isolation, it doesn’t really tell you a whole lot. The magic occurs when you feed all the data into one spot. We now have a digital dashboard that gives our brewers a near-instantaneous read on the health of our product and production facility. Previously we were generating dozens of binders of handwritten data and reading many gauges via plain eyesight. We now have consistent and calibrated data with our most critical data being stored in a secure location on IBM's cloud, accessible from any device with a secure network connection," Vogelbacher explains.

Sugar Creek Brewing plans to be the first brewer in the world to collaborate fully with AI to create a beer from scratch. It plans to name the beer IPAi. The company also wants to connect the manufacturing data with the huge stream of consumer-focused qualitative data that is being generated via beer social media sites.

"Times are changing fast, and an average local brewery could easily have more than 50,000 reviews of their products online and accessible by the public. My goal is to mine this data for qualitative feedback on our product and others and integrate it with our manufacturing data to make an artisanal craft beer using AI as the brewmaster. Eventually, our brewers will see AI as a tool to enhance their artistry. Just like an artist takes a hand-drawn sketch and uses a computer to digitize it into a stunning animation," Vogelbacher says.

The implementation of AI and IoT saved Sugar Creek Brewing $10,000 per month by figuring out the foaming problem. Vogelbacher believes it is making the business more healthy, which ends up preserving and improving the jobs of existing employees, and he does not see AI replacing staff. In addition, the quality of the product is getting better, which means more sales: More sales results in more personnel joining the team and a bigger company.

(Forbes)

Leveraging AI And IoT For Citizen Security In Smart Cities - Naveen Joshi

What do you think of when you hear the term smart city? Most likely, you’ll picture a city that offers seamless physical and digital connectivity through well-managed transportation and easily accessible communication networks. You might think of a city that enables convenient, even luxurious living through smart and sustainable housing, intelligent infrastructure, and digitized governance. It is true that benefits such as unprecedented levels of convenience and connectivity will distinguish the cities of tomorrow from those of today. However, our fixation with such pleasant benefits often makes us overlook the fact that smart cities can also enhance the provision of basic human necessities such as safety and security.

While it may be true that the world is -- ever so gradually -- becoming a safer place to live in, many perils to people’s well-being do still exist. And the biggest source of these perils, unsurprisingly, happens to be other people. Be it in the form of organized terrorism, accidents, planned robberies or thefts, there are many situations where people’s well-being and security may be predicated on the actions of another person or group of people. And preventing such incidents is paramount among the duties of smart city governors, along with ensuring the adequate supply of basic necessities such as food and water. To that end, smart city governments can use technologies like IoT and artificial intelligence in physical security.
Applications of IoT and artificial intelligence in physical security for smart securities

The security and safety of the citizens have traditionally been entrusted to the law and order departments of cities. The same will be true for smart cities of the future. However, the traditional methods employed by police departments to monitor the city populace for signs of potential deviance won’t suffice to maintain law and order in the future. In fact, the police departments in many cities across the US are already short-staffed, making it harder for them to ensure public safety all the time and in all places.

As the global population increases and more and more people start migrating to cities, the comparatively minuscule police forces won’t be able to provide security effectively. Hence, to help them, law and order agencies across the world are using increasingly advanced applications of modern technology for physical security. The applications of technologies like artificial intelligence in physical security and public safety are becoming commonplace now. And as smart cities continue to crop up across the world, such systems will gain ubiquity and functionality, giving governments greater leverage in their quest to ensure the safety of their assets, and more importantly, the safety of their people. Following are a few ways in which smart cities can use IoT and artificial intelligence for physical security:

Video analytics

Video surveillance has become a mainstay in governments’ efforts to maintain law and order across the world. However, the video surveillance systems of yesteryears have been primarily used only as a way to retrospectively analyze crimes that have been already committed or on the rare occasion, as a deterrent to the uncertain, potentially criminal individual. That's because, although there may have been numerous surveillance cameras scattered across towns and cities, there weren't enough people to constantly monitor the footage from each of them and act in a timely manner. This limitation is easily overcome with the help of video analytics, where real-time footage is analyzed by deep learning-driven AI. Any anomalies, such as foreboding indicators of violence can be identified by these systems and notify nearby personnel instantly. This may help in quick reaction to crimes or even prevention of many criminal acts.

Crowd monitoring

Monitoring large crowds in public places such as busy streets and intersections, shopping areas, and railway and metro stations for any potential security incidents is an important part of maintaining public safety. However, monitoring every individual's activity and behavior in such crowded spaces can be a tough task, to say the least, for security personnel. For instance, identifying a person who may be carrying explosives or weapons can be a real hassle.

Using different types of IoT sensors, a smart city's security personnel can constantly be on the lookout for suspicious and potentially harmful items. For instance, scanning devices can detect objects made of certain materials and discern their shape, even if they are hidden from plain sight. AI algorithms can analyze this scanned footage in real time to determine if these objects are harmful or not. If any lethal objects are identified, personnel can be dispatched for further examination.

Additionally, IoT and AI-enabled crowd monitoring systems can also keep track of the footfall in places where it matters, such as footbridges. These systems can ensure that bridges are always optimally loaded to ensure the safety of the people using them. The IoT-enabled systems can warn the people present as well as authorities when such places get loaded beyond a set threshold to initiate appropriate actions.

Access control

Access to high-security areas such as airports, banks, power plants, government data centers, and military bases can be restricted by using technologies like IoT and AI. IoT-powered security gateway security systems can ensure that only authorized personnel can enter key government facilities. Multi-factor authentication, which may include biometric scanning, can be used to add further layers of security to the most sensitive parts of such facilities.

Transportation can be made safer through IoT-enabled ticketing. Tickets can be made more secure and easily scannable by embedding RFID technology into them. In fact, RFID-enabled tickets were used for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, which helped in speeding up the ticket checking process despite the large volume of fans without compromising security. Alternatively, tickets can be digitally stored in people’s smartphones, that can automatically communicate with the security systems and automated turnstiles at airports to allow only the right people in without requiring manual guarding. This can enable more effective use of security personnel and keep them on standby for more serious situations.

Robotic patrol and security drones

While the use of IoT and AI in physical security may disburden security personnel, the use of AI-powered security robots can potentially eliminate the need for human law enforcers. Robotic security personnel can patrol the streets of smart cities and identify potential threats with the help of cutting-edge sensors and cameras. They can prevent crimes from happening just by their mere presence and can execute basic security missions like crowd control and search operations, sometimes with greater efficacy than human officers. Human security officers can stay on stand by and engage only in escalated situations. Similarly, drones can be deployed to monitor public places and notify nearby security personnel in case of potential threats to public safety.

While smart city administrators should always have their visions set on providing citizens with convenient and comfortable living, they should first ensure the security of their citizens. Adopting technologies like IoT and AI in physical security applications can be an effective step towards that end. However, it is important to realize that there is yet a long way to go before entrusting our safety completely to technology, as there are many things that only human security and law order personnel can do. And until we can have machines capable of performing these tasks, these technologies should and will only remain at the periphery of smart cities’ security strategy.

(Forbes)

IoT Platform for Fighting Climate Change Gains Ground

The prospect of “greening” the power grid must be more than a moral imperative. Renewable energy must have financial support.

That conclusion, mixed with a certain amount of curiosity regarding the potential of the Internet of Things, led to the founding of the Hamburg-based Kaiserwetter Energy Asset Management GmbH. The company’s Chief Executive Officer Hanno Schoklitsch determined that to reach the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, renewable energy power generation must first be digitized, which will then help enable potential green power investors and financial institutions better quantify their return on investment while driving transparency and helping reduce risk. “We are helping them make more money,” Schoklitsch said.

Indeed, a transition to renewable energy is underway thanks partly to economics. The cost of green energy technology is falling, making wind and solar energy increasingly competitive compared to unsubsidized nuclear, coal or even natural-gas–based power, according to Lazard, the financial advisory and asset management firm. In 2009, an unsubsidized megawatt-hour cost $135 for wind and $359 for solar. In 2018, the corresponding costs were $42 and $42.

Kaiserwetter, who describes his 2012-founded firm as a “data as a service company,” wants to help accelerate the transition toward green power by using the Internet of Things to help lead to smarter asset management. “In the beginning, we thought: ‘We are not software guys. We have an asset management background,’” explained Schoklitsch, who has a background in civil engineering and real estate. “We started asking what IoT and digital mean for the future of renewable energy.”

The IoT platform Aristoteles centralizes performance-related data from wind and solar farms in the cloud, where it runs machine learning and predictive analytics. The IoT platform also accommodates weather-related data such as wind velocity and cloud cover information, enabling asset managers to project energy output based such weather variables. Users of the service see a traffic-light–based color coding to see which assets are running optimally (shown in green), which could have potential problems (yellow) and which are in trouble (red).

“You know perfectly which manufacturers work properly, the operation maintenance costs, the opex and things like that,” Schoklitsch said. “We also display the kilowatt-hours, revenues and cash.”

To build a platform for renewable energy portfolio management, Kaiserwetter partnered with SAP, leveraging the company’s Leonardo digital technology as well as its IoT Application Enablement toolkit. The resulting platform, known as Aristoteles, also leverages the SAP cloud.

SAP itself also has a vested interest in green energy, having committed to going carbon neutral by 2025 as well as supporting the 2030-focused United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. “Climate change impacts everyone, right?” said Marcus Wagner, global environmental director at SAP. “There’s no doubt about this, whether it is the weather, water, greenhouse gas emissions and so on.”

To help combat the problem, SAP aims to help its customers improve resource productivity while reducing their carbon output and also aiming to be a sustainability role model. The company’s green focus extends to air travel as well. SAP aims to avoid business flights by investing in virtual collaboration and communication technologies while purchasing carbon emission offsets for the majority of countries in which it does business.

SAP also puts a priority on working with companies with a sustainability focus. “That includes partners like Kaiserwetter as well as helping companies in other industries like in the mobility arena with electric vehicles or carpooling and so on,” Wagner said. “I intend to help clients like Kaiserwetter to see what their business pain points and how we can help them run better. Kaiserwetter is a fantastic client.”

In any event, Kaiserwetter has won a slew of awards. It was named a top asset management solutions provider in 2019 by Utilities Tech Outlook. The company received the SAP Innovation Award in 2018. A year before that, the company won the “Premios Ejecutivos Award” in the “Best Energy Company 2017” category from the Spanish business magazine Ejecutivos.

Kaiserwetter plans to expand the functionality of its software over time, adding variables such as energy market pricing and benchmarking, which will enable users to compare, say, one wind farm in Germany to others across the world.

When asked about the competitive landscape, Schoklitsch said Kaiserwetter has carved out its own niche. “We are still the only one doing this. There are, for sure, other ones coming, but have shown how to add value to our clients as a data service company,” he said.

(IoT World)

Japan to test for vulnerable IoT devices

Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) has launched a new project to survey the security of IoT devices and alert users to insecure connections.

The government-run ICT research institute has started surveying IoT devices running on networks provided by the nation's ISPs to check whether devices use easily guessed or default passwords.

These will include common passwords known to have been used for cyber attacks in the past — the NICT gives the examples of password and admin1234 — as well as passwords consisting of the same or sequential alphanumeric characters.

If insecure connections are found, the NICT will provide the information to the ISPs, who will then alert users to the vulnerability.

The NICT started alerting the public to the planned five-year National Operation Towards IoT Clean Environment (NOTICE) project with an ad campaign early this month, and commenced surveying devices on Wednesday.

It has also established a support centre to respond to enquiries from users notified through the campaign.

In response to criticism over the NOTICE project for its obvious privacy and citizen rights implications, NICT insisted that testers will not intrude on any devices and that no information will be collected other than that required for the survey, which will itself be subject to “strict control measures”.

The agency said the penetration testing project is necessary in light of the growing trend of cyber attacks targeting IoT devices. Attacks targeting and involving co-opted IoT devices have caused serious damage in countries around the world.

(Tech Decisions)

Securing the IoT has become business-critical

The IoT era has arrived.

Here's some proof: 83% of organizations say the Internet of Things (IoT) is important to business today, and 92% say it will be in two years.

That's according to a recent DigiCert survey conducted by ReRez Research of 700 organizations in five countries to better understand the IoT and IoT security.

Anecdotally, I always find that markets have matured when it’s no longer an unusual thing. For example, a few years ago, it was hard to find IoT deployments that were outside of the traditional machine-to-machine industries such as manufacturing and oil and gas. Today, connected things are everywhere. Case in point: I recently interviewed the IT director at an entertainment venue and he walked me through all the connected things without ever saying “IoT.” The organization was connecting more things to improve customer experience, and it was treated as no big deal.
IoT creates new security risks

The near ubiquity of IoT does raise the security flag, as it presents a significant threat vector for hackers to breach companies. DigiCert’s goal in running the survey was to understand the state of IoT adoption, understand security implications, and quantify the benefits of having made the investments in IoT security. The survey focused on the four industry verticals where IoT was most mature — industrial, consumer products, healthcare, and transportation — and sampled companies of all sizes, with the median size being 3,000 employees.

The survey asked what objective companies were trying to achieve with IoT. The top responses were operational efficiency, customer experience, increased revenue, and business agility. It’s been my experience that businesses that are early in the adoption cycle of IoT are looking to cut costs through automation, which leads to better efficiency, but they quickly pivot to customer experience as a way of creating new revenue streams.

The survey also asked about the top concerns regarding IoT, and security was the top response. This should be no surprise, as IoT devices create new entry points.

DigiCert segmented the users into three tiers based on their level of IoT security success:

Top tier – Businesses that are having the least problems and are less likely to report having IoT security problems

Middle tier – Organizations that are having some problems with IoT security
Bottom tier – Companies that are having the most IoT security problems

Each group made up about one-third of the survey, creating nice distribution to analyze the differences between them.
Bottom-tier businesses have significantly more security challenges

DigiCert then compared the top and bottom tiers to quantify the benefits of investing in IoT security. For bottom-tier enterprises, it found they are:

38% more likely than top-tier enterprises to rate “Lack of appropriate IoT security-specific skillsets within their organization” as somewhat to extremely challenging
27% more likely to find Privacy challenging
26% more likely to find Scalability challenging
17% more likely to find Security challenging
17% more likely to find Lack of standards for security in IoT challenging
13% more likely to find Regulation more challenging

Top-tier enterprises experience fewer security incidents

The survey drilled down into actual security events. One interesting data point is that just under one-third of the top-tier saw any incidents at all. Juxtapose this with bottom-tier organizations that saw 100% of companies experience at least one incident, and it should be clear that the security investment can have big pay backs.

Regarding bottom-tier enterprises, they are:

More than six times as likely to have experienced IoT-based denial of service attacks
More than six times as likely to have experienced unauthorized access to IoT devices
Nearly six times as likely to have experienced IoT-based data breaches
Five times as likely to have experienced IoT-based malware or ransomware attacks

Currently, the number of threat actors focusing on IoT devices is relatively low. I expect, though, that as IoT grows, so will the number of IoT-specific attacks. So, there’s a wave coming, and bottom-tier companies are likely to see a rise in attacks.
IoT security incidents cost bottom-tier businesses real dollars

The survey drilled down a level and looked at the actual cost of the security incidents over the past two years. If ever there was an eye-opener as to the importance of IoT security, it’s the finding that 25% of the bottom-tier enterprises reported at least $34 million in losses in the past two years from IoT security-related losses. For the bottom tier, the costliest damages came from the following area:

Monetary damages (59%)
Lost productivity (59%)
Legal and compliance penalties (43%)
Lost reputation (40%)
A hit in stock price (31%)

I don’t want readers to think the top-tier organizations had no security issues because they did, but there were no significant costs associated with the security incidents.
Encryption and integrity are common best practices of top-tier enterprises

With an understanding that the top-tier enterprises have a marked advantage over middle- and bottom-tier companies, it’s worth understanding their best practices. The most common security practices done by the top-tier companies are:

Encryption of sensitive data
Ensuring the integrity of data being transmitted to and from a device
Scaling your security measures
Securing over-the-air updates
Secure software-based key storage

5 key best practices for IoT security

Over the next five years there will be tens of billions of IoT devices deployed, and IT leaders need to prepare for this. To help with this, DigiCert provided some recommendations on how to move ahead with IoT while minimizing security risks:

Review risk: Perform penetration testing to assess the risk of connected devices. Evaluate the risk and build a priority list for addressing primary security concerns, such as authentication and encryption. A strong risk assessment helps assure there are no gaps in the connected security landscape.

Encrypt everything: When devices are connected, all the data should be encrypted at rest and in transit. Make end-to-end encryption a product requirement to ensure this key security feature is implemented across all IoT endpoints.

Authenticate always: Review all of the connections being made to the IoT devices, including devices and users, to ensure authentication schemes only allow trusted connections to the endpoints. Digital certificates help provide seamless authentication with binded identities tied to cryptographic protocols.

Instill integrity: Account for the basics of device and data integrity to include secure boot every time the device starts up, secure over-the-air updates, and use code signing to ensure the integrity of any code being run on the device.

Strategize for scale: Develop a scalable security framework and architecture ready to support all IoT deployments. Plan accordingly, and work with third parties that have the scale and expertise to help you reach the business goals.

(NetworkWorld)

The IoT-Powered Rethink For Manufacturing: From Sales To Servitization

Here’s a figure that might give manufacturers the chills: 70%. That’s the percentage of manufacturing companies listed on the Fortune 1000 in 2008 that have since vanished.

How did the other 30% manage to stay alive? By adjusting to radical market shifts, investing in new technology, adapting their business models to stay in the game, and, more recently, by leaning into artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT).

One of the survivors is Rolls-Royce, the industrial giant that makes jet engines, submarines, oil and gas turbines, and the massive engines that power container ships. One secret of the company’s recent success: It has leveraged the power of predictive analytics, IoT and machine learning and applied it in the service of predictive maintenance.

Predictive maintenance makes traditional preventive maintenance look downright prehistoric—and it’s turning the discipline of field service from a traditional cost center into a chief revenue officer’s new best friend. Power plant operators who rely on IoT-connected equipment, for instance, can now use AI platforms such as GE’s Predix to forecast precisely when microscopic fissures will begin to appear in their turbines and generators, which would then need repair.

These predictive capabilities have helped drive growth of what’s called “servitization,” a business model that’s turning operational silos of service and maintenance into high-margin businesses driven by AI. Here’s the model in a nutshell: Rather than simply selling a piece of industrial hardware, manufacturers can sell customers a contract to provide highly streamlined, AI-powered maintenance and repair services for that specific product. The upside for customers? Less downtime due to machine failure and fewer burdensome repair costs. The upside for manufacturers? They’re now able to leverage the data generated by IoT sensors placed within their devices into revenue that’s generated over the lifecycle of their product.

To discuss the pros and cons of this shift in the industrial sector, we(Forbes) sat down with Lubor Ptacek, VP of product marketing at ServiceMax, one of several companies owned by GE Digital that specializes in service technology.

Has technology like IoT and AI forever upended traditional business models for manufacturers?

Not yet, but it will. We have a long way to go in terms of adoption. Everyone’s trying to leverage IoT to upend their business model, but the real value of IoT hasn’t been realized yet. We have to learn how to take up the data we’re collecting, analyze it and make it useful. The challenge is to determine when and what type of service is required from the large volumes of IoT data.
That’s where AI can really help—by analyzing the data for anomalies and correlating it with the desired equipment strategies. IoT can also leverage AI to enable manufacturers to offer the service outcome rather than just sell equipment.

Do you think servitization makes more sense for a larger company than a smaller one? How does scale change the equation?

I don’t think the size of the company matters as much as the equipment they manufacture. Servitization makes the most sense when the cost of service is a significant part of the greater cost of ownership. If the cost of service is negligible, then I don’t think it makes sense. But in some industries, the cost of service can far exceed the cost of ownership. Take GE Aviation. There it makes sense. A jet engine needs service regularly. For a medical device, it makes sense, too. Those need to be calibrated regularly because you have to meet regulatory requirements, and so on.

Do manufacturers need to adopt a servitization business model in order to be competitive in today’s marketplace?

Very much so. A lot of manufacturers deal with very low profit margins on a product. They’re competing with cheaper imports from overseas. How do you compete in that situation? Well, one thing you can’t import from China or Brazil is service. If you bundle the sales with service, you’re at a competitive advantage.

To make the most of the data generated by IoT, is it smarter to hire AI specialists internally or to outsource AI work to third-party vendors who specialize in it?

Every company needs to ask themselves what makes the most sense. Ultimately, in manufacturing, the greatest capability is the IoT. Once you start putting sensors in the products, you need to make sense of how to use that data, whether you do it yourself or with outside help.

In general, what strategic advice do you have for traditional manufacturers making the transition to servitization?

Start small. Identify a small sensible project with a clear benefit and use that to get going. Say you’re manufacturing home appliances, you have multiple products and multiple lines. So start with one product. Or start with one particular area where you roll it out. Focus on something small and tangible.

How should you approach a customer about making the shift from buying a product from you to buying a service?

The one question that needs to be asked is: Is it worth it? Discuss with customers how the pricing structure is going to change and what that means for them. For the customer, the decision in the end will be very pragmatic. When you buy a car, you decide whether or not to buy a service plan for it. You do the calculations and make your decision based on how much you love the car.

Technology is evolving at such a fast pace. How do you reassure a client that a product is not going to be mothballed within a few years?

It varies from industry to industry. Have you designed the product so that certain parts can be swapped easily? Chances are, yes. In other scenarios, it depends on the expected lifespan of the equipment. If it’s a jet engine, you expect it to last 20 years, so you will want to invest in long-term service.

Customers hate when things stop working. Downtime, expensive repairs—they hate that. Servitization is the most impactful way to take the risk away from the customer and put it all on the manufacturer.

(Forbes)

A Smarter World: How AI, The IoT And 5G Will Make All The Difference - Teresa Meek

From fields and streams to offices, factories, hospitals and transportation systems, organizations are using internet of things (IoT) sensors to collect massive amounts of data in order to improve operations and increase sustainability.

Analyzing this information reveals patterns that can nip maintenance problems in the bud and lead to better decisions about resource allocation. As data accumulates, more functions can transition over to automation. Systems become smarter, using artificial intelligence to make speedy decisions without human intervention.

The infrastructure that will unleash the IoT revolution will be powered by 5G technology. Without it, networks wouldn’t have anywhere near the capacity to handle the estimated 125 billion devices that will connect to the internet by 2030.

5G doesn’t just add capacity. Its multi-gigabit-per-second speed and latency of under 10 milliseconds will allow for precise interactions.

Sensors in the beds of sick patients will monitor their sleep and let medical professionals know if they’ve lost weight. Store owners will use smart cameras to learn where customers linger in the aisles, displaying video ads that suit their preferences or enticing them with discounts. Gamers will immerse themselves in the world of high-resolution virtual reality even on wireless connections.

From utilities, which will become more efficient, to cities, which will reap the benefits of more comprehensive connectivity, the 5G-enabled IoT will affect nearly every element of the world in which we work and live. Here are a few areas where 5G will make a particularly dramatic difference.

Improving Transportation

Forward-looking cities are adding sensors to buses, trains and traffic lights to reduce congestion and optimize routes. Las Vegas, under pressure from the arrival of 42 million visitors a year, is using IoT-enabled traffic lights and video cameras to gather traffic data. Information flows to a converged network where the city can adjust signal times and reroute vehicles to improve traffic flow. Smart street lights can also turn on and off in response to pedestrians and bicyclists, improving safety as well as conserving energy.

Cities can also share information about traffic problems and weather conditions with emergency crews, allowing them to arrive on the scene faster — maybe in time to save lives.

In vehicles, IoT data provides warnings about worn-down parts and other maintenance needs, eliminating breakdowns and improving safety in public transit and private fleets alike.

An Energy Conservation Breakthrough

Artificial intelligence (AI) will bring an unprecedented level of efficiency to energy production and distribution.

“For utilities, AI and machine learning can match energy generation and demand in real time,” said Jens Roehrich, a professor of management and supply chain innovation at the University of Bath in England.

Smart cities use digital networks to lower energy use and track air quality. Along the electric grid, smart meters can detect and fix equipment problems in advance, preventing massive blackouts, Roehrich said.

AI and the IoT play a crucial role in conserving our declining water resources. Drones hovering over fields collect information that helps farmers irrigate more efficiently. Stream sensors glean data that can improve water quality. According to the World Economic Forum, the IoT could be a game-changer for environmental sustainability worldwide.

Changing The Ways We Make Things

Factories have been collecting information from machines for a long time, but AI has changed the way they use it. By connecting machines, operators, enterprise IT and customers, it has turned the plant into a hub of continuous innovation.

Machine data is now processed on-site, at the “edge,” enabling operators to spot problems immediately before a batch of defective products leaves the production line. Technicians wear AI-enabled glasses that display instructions, eliminating the downtime that paging through manuals involves.

Data from the factory floor is connected with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, where it undergoes analysis to reveal trends and calculate cost-effectiveness. Managers no longer have to rely on hunches to schedule maintenance or order parts. They see results faster and can be bolder about trying new processes and equipment.

Benefits extend beyond the assembly line. Sensor-embedded products collect data on how customers use them, sending maintenance reminders and lending manufacturers new product design ideas.

The Coming Healthcare Transformation

Medical IoT applications are catching on fast. The IoT healthcare market will be worth $158 billion by 2022, according to MarketsAndMarkets.

Hospitals use smart infusion pumps to change patient medications automatically, responding more quickly to patient needs and saving staff time. Wristbands on infants alert nurses if heartbeats or oxygen levels become irregular. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags keep track of staff, patients and inventory.

IoT devices can also keep patients out of the hospital. Remote patient-care solutions can detect conditions ranging from hypertension to atrial fibrillation and sleep apnea, and patients can have results sent directly to their doctors without having to wait for an appointment. In some emergency situations, caregivers will have access to the information and guidance they need to intervene, enabling their patients to avoid expensive trips to the emergency room and decreasing crowding in overburdened facilities.

As data from patient populations accumulates, it can help researchers predict problems and solve them before they spiral out of control. Hospitals are already using AI platforms to predict which patients in the intensive care unit are at risk for respiratory failure and where hospital-acquired infections might occur. Scientists are now working on an AI-powered app to detect skin cancer in real time by analyzing a photo of a mole.

A smart pill that the Food and Drug Administration recently approved transmits data to medical professionals via wearable patches and smartphone apps, confirming consumption.

If some of the applications for AI and the IoT sound like futuristic hype, it’s only because they haven’t yet achieved widespread adoption. But they will soon, as telecom companies begin rolling out 5G in earnest next year. Companies are already developing products to take advantage of it.

In the future, we may see better-informed patients and fewer traffic jams, not to mention ambulances that know how to get patients to the hospital before it’s too late. We will use energy more efficiently and buy products designed to better suit our needs. There’ll be more clean water and fewer power outages.

AI and the IoT won’t solve all the world’s problems, but they will change the way we approach them, providing a continuous stream of data to spur innovations.

“We have yet to uncover the potential of these technologies,” Roehrich noted. “They will have a huge impact.”

(Forbes)

IoT'S IMPACT ON BIG DATA

IoT-connected devices generate a vast amount of data. The biggest impact of the internet of things (IoT) for businesses in the future will be how to manage big data. The future will see companies being forced to upgrade their processes, technologies, and security to align with this need.

Big data and IoT are entwined. How? Every device around us is connected to the cloud, sharing every minute bit of our data. Smart farming, e-health, smart retail, smart home, smart cities, smart environment are few applications of IoT in today’s world. A lot of data is generated from these applications that industries gather with the aim to improve their business workflows, enhance customer experience, and stay relevant in the ever-increasing competition. This means that IoT directly impacts data, making it swell in size (ergo, big data), and companies should leverage new-age technologies to draw accurate insights from the data to make informed business decisions.

Scope of IoT

Making sci-fi fantasy into reality, IoT is touching every aspect and every corner of our life. The benefits offered by the technology is beyond imagination. IoT is the new way of connecting one machine to another. In the future, we will envision automated services and systems, that will take care of our comfort as well. Hence, most of the major business leaders and even start-ups are making significant investments in this area by gathering large troves of data. The goal is to harness the power of big data that comes from sensors, actuators, and cameras and gain actionable insights by analyzing the data with big data analytics.

Impact of IoT on Big Data

By now, we know how big data and IoT are two sides of the same coin. Let’s see how IoT impacts big data: The first and the foremost thing that comes in our mind about the IoT-connected device is the voluminous amount of data that needs storage space. Hence, to address this need, companies are having a seismic shift towards PaaS (Platform as a Service). PaaS is a cloud-based platform that helps companies store their endless data. There are several types of PaaS: private, public, and hybrid. Based on the nature of the data you collect; you can choose the right type of PaaS.

Security and privacy aren’t new issues, of course. The IoT security breaches report is enough to prove the risks around the IoT ecosystem. Hence, companies should buck up with technologies that offer high-security to the data and the devices, both. No doubt, hackers will persistently strive hard to hack the IoT devices and data. But, your endeavor should always be to fail them in their attempt.

The last, and probably the most significant part, is analyzing the IoT data in real-time. With no proper analysis of data, the whole process of data collection and data security will go in vain, obviously. Hence, it is essential that companies make use of the right analytics tool, that will help them gain in-depth and actionable insights on the IoT data.

Right from data acquisition to data security to data analysis, IoT has a great impact on big data. The success of any company depends on how well they harness big data generated this way with the right analytics tools.

(BBN Times)

The Brilliant Ways Kimberly-Clark Uses Big Data, IoT & Artificial Intelligence To Boost Performance- Bernard Marr

Kimberly-Clark is a Fortune 500 company. It's personal care product brands, including Huggies, Kleenex, and Scott, touch nearly 1 of every 4 people each day in 175 countries. Through Kimberly-Clark Professional the company offers products and solutions to create healthier, safer and more productive workplaces in a variety of industries including food services, healthcare, manufacturing, office buildings and more. As an industry leader, Kimberly-Clark is committed to driving digital innovations to improve operations and customer experiences in the fast-moving consumer goods category. Here are a few ways Kimberly-Clark is using big data, the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) in their operations.

K-Challenge Brings Innovation to the Consumer Packaged Goods Industry

Kimberly-Clark sponsors the annual K-Challengethat invites entrepreneurs, start-ups and other inventors to develop innovations for the consumer packaged goods category via the Kimberly-Clark Digital Innovation Lab (D’Lab). There are six categories the competition focuses on including data and predictive analytics, cyber security, omnichannel shopper experiences, IoT/wearables/connected devices, supply chain/operations solutions and content and media experiences. This investment in technology innovation helps Kimberly-Clark adapt and apply some of today's best ideas into its operations.

Self-Service Retail Analytics

Kimberly-Clark generates a lot of data from several internal sources such as sales and marketing spend, external sources such as Nielsen, web applications, store performance and purchasing information. Until they adopted a platform powered by Tableau, Amazon Redshift, and Panoply, their complex data resided in inflexible systems from multiple data sources that made it difficult to use. By consolidating the data is now accessible to more professionals within the organization and they are saving time (eight hours weekly) and money ($250,000 over the course of two years) because they are spending less time collecting and sorting through the data and more time interpreting it. They are now able to access and use the data efficiently.

Internet of Things App for Facilities Managers

To help facilities managers monitor and manage the condition of restrooms remotely, Kimberly-Clark Professional introduced an Intelligent Restroom app. The state of a building's restrooms is critical in how tenants and customers perceive a building. An unhygienic bathroom can cause customers and tenants to have a lower opinion of the facility. Sensors on soap dispensers, air fresheners, entrance doors and more collect data that is then sent to the cloud-based app. Facilities managers can access the data from mobile or desktop to monitor the condition of the property's restrooms, and they don't have to be on-site. A pilot study of the Intelligent Restroom app showed the number of supplies used decreased by up to 20 percent when the app was deployed.

Simplifying a Complex Supply Chain with Data

The global supply chain Kimberly-Clark manages to produce its diverse line-up of products is massive and complex. They have adopted a more networked approach to supply chain since each party is typically involved in multiple stages of the process. Data-driven analytics throughout its supply chain - from planning, manufacturing, partner management and delivery - help Kimberly-Clark simplify and sort out the complexities inherent in their supply chain as well as find value throughout the process. Additionally, they understand that data is vital in helping them meet changing customer demands from transparency in the supply chain to customer expectations about the product, price, service, and quality. They also adopt a more open approach with suppliers and focus on co-innovation.

Effective Sales and Marketing

In a pilot program at Walmart stores in China, Kimberly-Clark leveraged big data to drive sales and identify new business opportunities from the vast volume of point-of-sale data generated daily. They partnered with Retail Solutions Inc. to track sales and inventory in real-time. This system can accurately analyze massive data sets to make sure the inventory of each product and each store is optimized. Kimberly-Clark has since rolled out similar programs at other retailers to capture activity at the point of sale to continue to learn about customer demand for products.

Kimberly-Clark also uses data and machine learning to enhance the performance of their digital promotions and the customer experience from RevTrax SmartOffers® and Nielsen Marketing Cloud. Offers can be continuously updated based on real-time consumer behavior. They are also getting to know their 1.3 billion customers better by using data analytics across digital channels so they can deliver content the customer wants and needs to drive engagement and boost conversion rates.

KT uses IoT, big data to monitor fine dust levels at 1,500 locations

South Korean operator KT is using internet of things (IoT) and big data analytics to monitor and analyze air quality 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The initiative supports government-led efforts to reduce fine dust levels, The Korea Times reports. Under its "Air Map Korea" project, launched in September 2017, KT has established a fine dust observation network at 1,500 spots such as base stations and public telephone booths nationwide.

KT has also deployed an integrated fine dust control center at the KT Intelligent Network Support (INS) unit in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province. According to Kwon Hye-jin, head of KT’s INS unit, the company checks any errors or failures of 1,500 networks around the clock, and when a non-functional network is found, the control center indentifies its location immediately and sends technicians to the spot.

Information such as fine dust levels, temperature, noise levels and humidity, collected by the observation networks, is transmitted to the company's "Air Map Platform" every minute, and the control center manages such information in real time, Hye-jin added.

The company said its big data analytics is used to systematically manage fine dust levels as it analyzes mobile population and the volume of traffic as well as the locations of facilities that emit sources of air pollutants. The technology can also be used to see if policies designed to reduce fine dust levels are actually effective.

"We are developing a variety of measures to reduce fine dust levels based on our observation networks and big data analytics," said Lee Kwang-uk, head of the environment and safety business department at KT. "We plan to develop a mobile phone app within the year to share fine dust information with more people", Kwang-uk also said.

(TelecomPaper)

No Fleas On HarperDB, IoT Database Ready To 'Go Fetch' At The Edge- Adrian Bridgwater

The so-called Internet of Things (IoT) is growing, exponentially, obviously. As an example of the machines that populate the IoT, modern aircraft are estimated to now fly with connected sensors monitoring as many as 5000 component elements per engine every second - and that’s just the engines. For equipment engineers in aviation (and every other industry now digitally transforming) this means a lot of head scratching, some cool innovations and a lot of fine-grained physical tuning with a fair dose of engine grease.

The same challenge also exists for information technologists supporting these systems.

For software programmers and database engineers in every industry, making the IoT work means a lot of brain-aches, some super-cool innovations and a lot of fine-grained keyboard and screen based tuning, with a fair dose of ‘virtual’ microprocessor engine grease (spoiler alert: microprocessors are built in clean room labs and rarely get oiled with lubricant).

We need a smarter edge

The question for IoT engineers (physical real world engineering & tech engineers) is: how do we get smarter out on the edge? That is to say -- how do we make more of the performance analysis, predictive maintenance analytics and wider management system-related computing happen out there on the edge, on the devices themselves?

Aiming to play ‘go fetch’ in this space is the doggy-named HarperDB. This is an enterprise-level IoT database built to run on ‘edge’ devices (i.e. machines out in the extremities of a network, on an aircraft, on an oilrig, in any remote location even in cities). It is has small footprint (it is economical in terms of how much code it takes to run, its CPU power is moderate and its battery life and memory requirements are lean) and can be installed directly on a micro-computing devices. Harper was (in fact still is) company CEO Stephen Goldberg’s favorite dog, a five-year old adopted pup.

For its summer update cycle, the firm has announced new features to HarperDB that allow real time geo-analysis, storage optimization for edge devices and the ability to run massive data analytics. When HarperDB talks about geo-analysis, it is referring to the act of being able to geo-tag any device in the world to know where it is on the planet when it carries out a particular computation and creates a log file and record of what it has done.

But why bother trying to make edge devices smarter when we have all that power at the cloud datacenter in the backend?

“In IoT projects, many devices on the edge have limited storage hardware and the data is only valuable for a short period of time. With the ability to replicate and store data in the cloud, users can optimize their on-device storage for the most impactful analytics,” said Zach Fowler, chief product officer of HarperDB. “It’s important that we constantly evolve the HarperDB solution to meet industry demands. With enhanced geo-analysis and the ability to concurrently run large data sets in the background, our customers have a competitive advantage they can exploit for success.”

HarperDB’s dynamic schema (that means database fields that can be changed in name, form and relationship to other data values as business requirements change) allows for geo-analysis and reaction to constantly evolving IoT data in real time from the edge. Fowler says that as more IoT sensors are deployed, the complexity around data analysis will increase dramatically.

How geo-data works

Utilizing the industry standard of GeoJSON (a format for encoding a variety of geographic data structures) users can integrate with MapBox, Google Maps and other Geographic Information System (GIS) applications. Traditionally, geo data would be analyzed in a GIS or spatial database. What HarperDB is saying is that companies can now combine workloads for applications, data warehousing and spatial analysis into a single product.

“It is especially critical in IoT for companies to be able to immediately identify where systems need attention in real-time as their data is transacting or to understand where it trends overtime. With HarperDB's geo-analysis functions, users have the ability to visualize and understand their data as it occurs in the real world by gaining insights into specific locations, regions or their entire topology,” said Kyle Bernhardy, chief technology officer of HarperDB.

This whole get smart at the edge element of the IoT has some logic to it, that is - firms using these technologies want to be able to make decisions about what data needs to be stored on the edge without incurring further storage or hardware costs. Think about all those video capture cameras and sensors out there constantly creating data files and needing to hang on to them until they are needed.

Time to Live, or Die

HarperDB says it is addressing this aspect with its Time to Live auto expire data function. We don’t actually need to make that old data die and kill it off. In fact, users can store the most important information on the IoT edge while retaining full access to all historical data in the cloud.

The proliferation of IoT devices is being seen in every industry from oil and gas, logistics, military defense, telecommunications, agriculture and so on. Making these machines work better and work smarter means giving them more power ‘in situ’ for sure… but it also means making that on-device at-the-edge power moveable, malleable and manageable so that we can draw it all back home into the cloud when we want to.

IoT Security Solutions To Hit $6B By 2023

The Internet of Things (IoT) cybersecurity solutions market is poised to hit $6 billion globally by 2023, according to a new study from Juniper Research.

In a press release highlighting the new research, Juniper Research said that spending by product and service providers and end customers will rise close to 300 percent from now until 2023.

“The interconnected nature of the IoT means that even innocuous devices like the connected fridge can become a threat. Vendors see that risk as low, while little has been done from a regulatory perspective to protect consumers,” said research author Steffen Sorrell.

According to Juniper, drivers of the IoT cybersecurity solutions market will be growing business risk and regulatory minimum standards. According to the researcher, smart home IoT security spending will be less than 17 percent of the consumer market in 2023. In contrast, IoT smart energy security spending is predicted to reach $1 billion annually in 2023.

Juniper’s new research comes a few days after Kaspersky Lab, the security company, announced its “State of Industrial Cybersecurity 2018” survey, which found that 65 percent of global organizations believe that OT/ICS security risks are more likely with IoT over the next year. In a press release, Kaspersky Lab said that, with organizations realizing the risk with IoT use cases, managing connected devices is a major priority for 53 percent of survey respondents. What’s more, 77 percent of industrial organizations surveyed said they feel unsafe, with respondents saying that their organizations are likely to become the target of cybersecurity incidents involving industrial control networks.

As for concerns related to IoT, 54 percent claim the increased risks associated with connectivity and integration of IoT ecosystems is a major challenge, as are new types of IoT security measures that need to be implemented.

“With the sector embracing more digital trends, such as cloud and IoT, to further drive efficiencies, the challenge and importance of cybersecurity becomes even more vital to keep critical systems running and businesses operational,” said Georgy Shebuldaev, brand manager of Kaspersky Industrial Cybersecurity. “The good news is that we are seeing more and more businesses improving their cybersecurity policies to include dedicated measures toward safeguarding their industrial control networks. While this is a step in the right direction, action needs to go further to keep up with the pace of digitalization. This includes updating incident response programs to cover specific ICS actions and using dedicated cybersecurity solutions to help meet the challenge.”

(PYMNTS)

What Does IoT Look Like In Nigeria Right Now? - Akindare

Like one those starving children Western media love to use to depict Africa is the answer to the title question. But it’s not as vacant as you would think. GRIT Systems’ G1 product, for all intents and purposes, is an IoT device that is designed, built and sold here in Nigeria.

But the IoT space isn’t popping either. There are no big startups, government policies or funding rounds. So what really is going on, you ask? Well, we took a look:

Who is doing great stuff?

The hardware community is doing a lot of incredible things around IoT. From the aforementioned GRIT Systems to Fasmicro’s Zenvus, which makes a range of connected sensors and nodes, the maker community are building quite a few IoT solutions that actually have the potential for massive scale.

There’s also the Obuno IoT Engine, built with 95% made-in-Nigeria components by Abuja-based not-for-profit Innovation Habitat Initiative for Indigenous Technology(iHabitat).

Agu Collins Agu, mentor at iHabitat and director, Corporate Planning & Strategy Department of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), says, “It is maker friendly and fully compatible with Arduino IDE and peripheral modules. Obuno IoT Engine, an end-to-end platform helps IoT developers avoid tunnel vision and its consequences by providing a comprehensive set of hardware and software components that easily combine into complete IoT applications, providing developers with a head start on their custom designs.”

The federal government seems to be aware of the potential of the IoT space too. Recently, it approved six Cisco-executed “IoT labs” in six unity schools across the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria. But that’s about it. The National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) has no investments or white paper concerning IoT. There aren’t even skills development programs specific to IoT.

Opportunities

The fourth industrial revolution is upon us and as [both] the largest economy and largest population in Africa, Nigeria should not get left behind (again). At Cisco Connect 2014 in South Africa, Cisco estimated that the IoT market in Africa alone is worth $500 billion – and that is a very tiny fraction of the global estimate. Obviously, if Nigeria wants to play in that market, it needs to create enablers.

An enabler could be promoting local IoT solutions and providing those solutions with access to market or creating collaborative spaces where people can tinker and build. Imagine traffic systems that can direct traffic based on data collected from connected cameras and sensors, and algorithms. There is so much ‘innovating’ that could be happening.

IoT is also a “future” technology in that it’s not at full maturity yet and the kinks are still being worked out. However, the 13.2 billion devices already connected to the Internet in 2015 shows that in the future, IoT will rule everything. There are even posits that IoT is the next evolution of the Internet as we know it. That’s why it’s a great opportunity to invest in it now, while the rest of the world is also trying to figure it out, so we can have some kind of footing later on as well as benefit from shared knowledge.

Rigado Raises $15 Million for Expansion of Commercial IoT Edge-as-a-Service

Rigado, a global provider of commercial IoT Edge-as-a-Service solutions, recently announced it has closed a $15 million Series A round of funding, led by Madrona Venture Group with participation from Vanedge Capital, Rogue Ventures, FusionX Ventures and the Oregon Venture Fund. The investment will be used to expand its engineering, sales and deployment teams to meet growing demand for Rigado solutions that provide connectivity, computing and security for large-scale IoT applications such as smart buildings, asset tracking and connected retail. In addition, the funding will be used to help Rigado further extend its global footprint. Joining the board will be Len Jordan from Madrona and Moe Kermani from Vanedge Capital.

“The commercial IoT market is growing quickly as business owners understand the need for widespread supply chain control, smart buildings, asset tracking and the ability to personalize consumer services in retail locations,” said Len Jordan, managing director, Madrona Venture Group. “Rigado’s team has a deep understanding of both the technology and customer challenges and we are excited to help them grow to be a global powerhouse.”

In the year since Rigado announced $5.2M in seed funding, the company has seen rapid year-over-year growth fueled by accelerated new product development. It opened an EMEA headquarters in London and seeks to continue to extend its international footprint with today’s funding. Rigado partners with a broad set of companies to deploy their complete edge IoT service in locations across the globe.

“The past year has seen very strong growth and interest from commercial organizations and their IoT partners, a testimony to the hard work of the Rigado team,” said Ben Corrado, CEO, Rigado. “We’re proud to be working with a team of creative, dedicated employees and innovative companies who use Rigado’s edge infrastructure to deploy their IoT applications on a global scale. From faster time to ROI to greater security and enhanced management, we look forward to further accelerating Rigado innovation and extending our solutions to more enterprises worldwide.”

Rigado Cascade Edge-as-a-Service

Rigado recently announced Cascade, its integrated Edge-as-a-Service solution built on Microsoft Azure for IoT edge connectivity, computing and security. Offered as a simple monthly subscription, Rigado Cascade reduces the complexity, risk and cost of large-scale commercial IoT deployments.

The Cascade IoT Gateway solution integrates with Azure IoT to enable smart building solutions at scale. Rigado is a limited preview partner of new Azure IoT spatial intelligence capabilities announced this month.

“The internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) have great potential to help building owners, operators, and occupants manage and dwell in buildings with greater efficiency—saving costs and energy, and organizing space in a way that best fits a company’s culture and goals,” said Bert Van Hoof, Partner, Group Program Manager Azure IoT, Microsoft. “New Azure IoT capabilities make it easy to create, scale, manage, and secure solutions that take advantage of spatial intelligence. Rigado’s solutions provide a key ingredient in this context, enabling a range of new real estate applications that can help bring the next level of ‘smart’ to the built environment.”

(IoT Evolution)

Recharging the energy industry with smart grids, big data and IoT- Martyn Williams

Recent years have seen a new wave of technology and opportunities hit the energy sector, several of which have been presented by the onset of big data and Internet of Things technology.

Ensuring that supply meets the customers’ demand is a key responsibility of the energy industry, however, these smart technologies are changing the way the grid generates, manages, distributes and stores energy.

Smart grids integrate intelligent controls, telecommunications, industrial automation, SCADA software and new technologies with the legacy equipment of existing infrastructure. New technologies enable the electrical grid to instantly respond to our changing energy demands, creating a more efficient transmission of electricity.

Other benefits associated with the smart grid include quicker restoration after power failures, improved security, remote engineering capabilities, lower electricity rates for consumers and crucially, better integration and easy expansion of new and existing renewable energy systems.

Historically, the traditional electrical grid has had difficulty accommodating alternative sources of power, however, as renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, are supplying an increasing percentage of the nation’s power, simplifying renewable integration to the grid is essential.

Fossil-fuel power plants operate at a pre-mitigated output level, meaning they provide a consistent and predictable amount of electricity. However, some forms of renewable power are reliant on a fluctuating resource. In the cases of wind or solar power, for example, if the wind speed slows or clouds obscure sunlight from solar panels, the energy output will drop without warning. Smart technology is able to predict when this might happen and automatically identify and execute an alternative energy source to make up for a potential decrease in energy supply.

Much of the discussion surrounding smart grids and renewables is still at the conceptual or proof-of-concept stage, and, as a result, it can be difficult to translate these technologies into real, tangible strategies for the existing electrical system. However, there are a few technologies that are already leading the way in the smart grid race.

IoT fuelled distribution

In October 2016, Reactive Technologies used smart technology to transmit data across the national energy grid for the first time in history. The new system inserts data as small changes into the 50Hz signal itself, which jumps the air gap that previously prevented the transmission from taking place.

This technology is capable of sending messages through electricity cables to appliances such as heaters, fridges and kettles that use a smart plug. This tells appliances to make small variations in their energy usage, marginally reducing the overall consumption of thousands of homes and businesses.

While this small change may be unnoticeable to homeowners, it could make a significant impact to the nation’s carbon footprint. Smart technologies, like this new data system, are reducing the likelihood of utility companies turning to nuclear power stations or diesel generator farms during peak hours of energy consumption. It also makes brownouts less likely and, subsequently, lowers the nation’s carbon emissions.

This way, when the nation simultaneously reaches for their kettles to sooth their morning caffeine craving, we are not burning gallons of diesel in the process.

Information is power

The introduction of smart technology and intelligent infrastructure has not only transformed the way energy suppliers can, and will, manage energy and carbon emissions, but also continuously delivers consumption and efficiency data directly to the suppliers themselves.

The true value of big data resembles that of crude oil. While it may be hugely valuable, it is useless when unrefined. According to a recent statement by Gartner, the adoption of big data analytics is one of the key trends in the energy sector, especially for organisations hoping to reduce costs and enhance their competitive advantage. While there are a number of reasons energy companies should archive data, predictive analytics has, by far, the most potential.

By integrating intelligent SCADA software, energy suppliers can automatically collect and archive data on-site or in the cloud. This way, engineers can remotely analyse the real-time and historical data of any substation in the network by storing these records in a centralised cloud location. Naturally, this data is only as valuable as the tools used to analyse it. When choosing a SCADA application, it is vital that energy companies look for software that can deliver business intelligence from data.

Naturally, the ability to monitor operations remotely is a huge benefit for the energy industry, particularly for sectors dealing with isolated sites such as electrical and offshore oil and gas. However, this enhanced connectivity does raise concerns regarding cyber security.

Security by design

We have all heard of the heightened security threats surrounding smart technology and the energy industry is no exception. In a worst-case scenario, the risk of security breaches to smart energy grids has the potential to plunge entire parts of the country into darkness.

When choosing a HMI/SCADA platform, energy companies should opt for software with multiple cyber security barriers to protect against attackers. At COPA-DATA, the topic of cyber security has been an integral part of product design from its inception. The zenon product family, for example, is HMI/SCADA software for energy and infrastructure developed with security in mind. These security methods include providing encryption of network traffic, client authentication and creating ‘islands’ in a distributed network.

As a systems integrator, Capula operates across the entire energy sector and has recently developed its next generation of substation control systems, utilising zenon’s inbuilt security.

While integrating the right SCADA software is paramount, energy companies cannot just rely on software to protect the grid. For complete security, cooperation is key. Energy companies should provide conventional employee training and undertake targeted security tests against energy systems. COPA-DATA works alongside partners at TÜV SÜD and public institutions such as the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT).

Despite ongoing technical development and enhanced protection against cyberattacks, it is important that energy companies do not lose sight of the physical security threats at these isolated locations. Electrical substations, for example, are intentionally designed to appear discrete, to avoid attracting the attention of any criminals who may want to destroy or tamper with the electrical supply. However, the unobtrusive appearance of these substations usually means that there are no security lights, CCTV deterrents or significant fencing or barricades – requiring even more care when choosing cyber security methods.

The future energy mix

The energy sector has dramatically transformed over the past few decades and we are likely to see even more drastic changes in the near future. As technology continues to develop, the way that the industry generates, manages, distributes and stores energy will develop too.

Recently, ambitious proposals to harness the energy of the Atlantic’s tidal surges have been forwarded to the government for a review of tidal lagoon technology. The £1.3 billion project consists of a prototype system of dams and turbines, which will be built on Swansea Bay before being rolled out in full. Unlike other forms of power generation, tidal power is not subject to the irregularities of weather, meaning that utilities companies can guarantee when every high tide will be for years into the future. The project – along with many other similar innovations in the pipeline - could transform the UK’s power supply by providing Britain with a zero-carbon source of energy.

The energy industry has come a long way since the fossil-fuel burning days of the industrial revolution. In fact, the transformation of the sector is unrecognisable in comparison to just a few decades ago. New technologies such as big data analytics and smart grids, combined with a growing demand for renewable energy sources are likely to change the industry even more dramatically.

Kunle Fayemi's Blog

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