Internet of Things
Content
Today, the Internet -- tomorrow, the Internet of Things?
Page 1 of 6
Today, the Internet -- tomorrow, the Internet of
Things?
Anything with an on-off switch will be part of the network and will generate data
that takes on a life of its own.
Lamont Wood
November 9, 2011 (Computerworld)
Embedded in the heel of his shoe was an early example of the Internet of Things -- but
Andrew Duncan didn't know it at the time.
"My girlfriend was able to watch me on the computer screen as I did a five-mile walk,"
recalls Duncan, a Los Angeles technology consultant, of his participation in an Alzheimer's
fund-raising walk in November of 2010. "And the shoe will send you text message if the
battery gets low, or if the wearer
steps outside of set zones."
His GPS-equipped shoe is from GTX
Corp. in Los Angeles, and costs
$299 plus a monthly wireless
subscription. This is an example of
the widely predicted Internet of
Things (IoT), where anything with
intelligence (including machines,
roads and buildings) will have an
online presence, generating data
that could be put to uses currently
unimagined. Industry watchers
disagree only on how far along we
are -- and which science-fiction
setting best depicts what's coming.
(See sidebar.)
"Anything intelligent would have an online presence," says Sam Lucero, analyst at ABI
Research in Oyster Bay, N.Y.
Dave Evans, chief futurist at Cisco,
agrees. He predicts 50 billion connected
devices by 2020, and social networks to
connect them. "In the coming years,
anything that has an on-off switch will
be on the network," he says. "I foresee
it in just about every industry and
Clashing sci-fi scenarios
If the Internet of Things continues its current
rate of progress, three works of fiction
frequently cited by the sources for this story
might prove to be prophetic:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9221614/Today_... 16-Nov-11
Today, the Internet -- tomorrow, the Internet of Things?
Page 2 of 6
stream of life."
The deluge has already begun.
"There are several industries where IoT
is happening, and some where it is a
pipe dream," says Steve Hilton at
Analysis Mason, a technology
consulting firm in London. It is
happening in energy and utilities,
automobiles and transportation, and
security and surveillance. There's a
"tiny bit in healthcare," he adds. If you
include e-readers like Kindle, it is
happening in the consumer field.
Where it is not happening today, he
says, is in household white goods, such
as kitchen appliances. "The vendors
want them, but I don't think there'll be
much of a market," Hilton says. "If it
costs an extra $150, would you buy it?
In this case technology is ahead of
market demand."
z Minority Report, the 2002 movie starring
Tom Cruise in which the main character
is (amidst chase scenes) greeted with
personalized messages from automated
displays as he enters retail
establishments.
z Rainbows End, the 2006 novel by
Vernor Vinge in which the public
infrastructure and most individuals
(through sensors in their clothes) are
instrumented, and people can interact
with the resulting augmented reality
thanks to display devices built into
contact lenses.
z Nineteen Eighty-Four, the 1948 novel by
George Orwell depicting a repressive
totalitarian state in which, among other
things, pervasive technology is used to
keep the inhabitants under constant
surveillance.
New York University photography professor Wafaa Bilal displays the digital camera mount he had implanted in the
back of his head in December 2010. The concept of the project was to capture images objectively, without the
interference of a viewfinder, according to Bilal. Images from his camera have been streamed over the Internet, but
Bilal's body has had problems accepting the implant. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi
Katharine Frase, vice president at IBM Research, wonders what business models could be
developed if the washing machine, the thermostat and the water heater could be managed
together, by either the consumer or a third party. "We see a willingness by people to share
information about themselves if they are going to get something back. If there is some
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9221614/Today_... 16-Nov-11
Today, the Internet -- tomorrow, the Internet of Things?
Page 3 of 6
benefit, like lowering the power bill, from you knowing that I am taking a shower, then it might
be OK."
"The investments are being made now," adds Kevin Dallas, Microsoft's manager of Windows
Embedded products, though he declined to give specific examples. "We are seeing it across
every industry, and we will start to see the results in the next two to three years."
Dallas foresees several possible near-future scenarios based on the IoT:
z As a member of a loyalty program, you send your shopping list to a store. You are given an RFID tag
on arrival, and networked digital display signs in the store direct you through the aisles, from item to
item, to find what you need.
z In other stores, signs size you up as you approach them on the basis of your height and clothing and
then display promotions that are assumed to be appropriate to you.
z In any store, digital signage offers promotions based on real-time events, such as sales volumes or
the weather.
z Your refrigerator monitors its contents and makes restocking suggestions. (Refrigerators with
connectivity are already on the market, including one from Samsung, but Hilton's sense is that there
is currently no market demand.)
z Your car tracks where it has gone and where it is going, predicts where it will go next and has
suggestions ready if you ask for the nearest gas station, using data from the cloud. (Toyota and
Microsoft are already building such a service.)
z Your car additionally monitors its internal functions and offers maintenance advice, as the OnStar
remote diagnostics facility already does for General Motors and, now, other makers' cars.
z Your car's black-box data can be submitted to your insurance company in an effort to get reduced
rates, assuming that data constitutes evidence of safe driving. A number of car insurance firms are
already offering usage-based policies, sometimes based on data gathered by an instrument mounted
on the car, as with the Snapshot program from Progressive Casualty Insurance Company.
z Your car can send you a notice if your teenager drives it over a certain speed, or through a specified
"geo-fence," as can now be done with certain add-on devices.
Other sources predict hospital beds with so much instrumentation that no sensors need to be
attached to the patient, as shown in this research.
"After three or four years it will go beyond retail, and after 10 years our whole lives will be
different from what we can imagine now," predicts Kneko Burney, strategist at Compass
Intelligence, a consulting firm in Scottsdale, Ariz. "In 10 years it will not be strange to have a
cell phone earpiece embedded in your ear."
In China, Premier Wen Jiabao has
made the Internet of Things a
national goal, notes MIT Prof.
Edmund W. Schuster, who works
in the university's Auto ID Center.
"The Chinese see it as
fundamental part of a harmonious
society, especially as it would
make services easier to coordinate
in dense cities," he says.
Additionally, the municipal
government of Wuxi (also
rendered Wu-Shi), a suburb of
Shanghai, has announced
intentions to build an IoT-based
theme park. "It is expected to
become a travel destination of [a]
new generation for [sic] Internet
By the numbers
Steve Hilton at Analysis Mason, a technology consulting firm in
London, forecasts a grand scale for the Internet of Things.
Here's what he's expecting.
In the energy industry, Hilton figures there should be 22 million
connected residential utility meters by the end of 2011, and the
figure should grow by 50% yearly for the next 10 years. The
meters, part of the "smart grid" trend, report power
consumption in near real time through wireless, landline or
data-over-powerline connections, allowing better management
of the power grid, he explains.
In transportation, there should be 30.8 million device
connections worldwide, mostly used to track the location of
trucks, and growth should be 27% yearly. In security and
surveillance, there should be 20.6 million connected devices,
counting both residential and industrial installations, with a
growth rate of 37%.
In healthcare there should be 1.5 million devices at the end of
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9221614/Today_... 16-Nov-11
Today, the Internet -- tomorrow, the Internet of Things?
users, an offline spiritual home,
and an entertainment center,"
according to a press release from
city officials.
M2M roots
Page 4 of 6
the year, with a growth rate of 20% to 25%. The devices are
usually worn by a patient to monitor a chronic condition, such
as a device that advises a heart disease patient when to take
medicine. Healthcare is under-represented because of the
amount of testing that a medical device must undergo before it
can be marketed, Hilton notes.
As for transportation, a full range of tracking and maintenance
monitoring instruments should soon be available in the
consumer car market, he suggests. "All the major car-makers
are on top of this and deciding on solutions," he says.
The IoT got its start about 15 years
ago with the idea of using
machine-to-machine (M2M)
technologies to monitor remote assets, mostly over now-defunct proprietary networks,
explains Alex Brisbourne, head of KORE Telematics, an M2M wireless service provider in
Atlanta.
The change to the IoT started in 2001, "when we started to see IP (Internet Protocol) offered
through cellular networks," he recalls.
"Internet of Things is a slightly newer phrase that means the same thing as M2M," agrees Bill
Ingle, an analyst at Beecham Research in Boston. "The carriers have gotten interested in
M2M in the last two years as another source of revenue, as the voice market has started to
saturate."
Lucero at ABI Research adds that that there is considerable overlap among the Internet of
Things, M2M, RFID, smart meters, various sensor networks, building and industrial control
systems, and home automation.
The technology
As for the necessary sensor, transmission and processing technologies, "There are no showstoppers," says Evans. However, it would be advisable to perfect ways for the sensors to
"harvest" energy from their environments to avoid reliance on batteries, he adds. The other
big enabler will be the spread of IPv6, as that addressing scheme offers enough potential
Internet addresses to give every atom on the face of the earth its own address, Evans notes.
"There are no technical barriers," agrees Burney. The limiting factor is the cost of the micro
components, the bandwidth of the wireless networks, business strategies and the ability of
humans to absorb that much information, he adds.
HP Labs is currently developing nanotechnology sensors for IoT use, says Stan Williams,
senior HP Fellow and director of the Nanotechnology Research Group at HP Labs. So far his
lab has developed a MEMS-based device for detecting vibration and movement, which can
sense vibration on three axes and rotation on three axes. HP Labs is also working on taste
and smell sensors based on laser scattering. They are sensitive to one part per trillion, and
can be used to identify chemicals and biological species, Williams says.
Both are about one square millimeter, meaning that they would be very inexpensive to mass
produce, he adds. Other types of sensors needed to complete the IoT, such as for pressure
and light, are already available on the open market, he adds.
In the next year HP Labs will be mounting its first big project using IoT technology, a seismic
imaging project for Shell Oil, giving transparency to the top 20 kilometers of the Earth's crust
over an area of ten square kilometers. "We'll be doing the same for the Earth as has already
been done with imaging inside human beings," Williams says.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9221614/Today_... 16-Nov-11
Today, the Internet -- tomorrow, the Internet of Things?
Page 5 of 6
The Samsung RSG309 LCD Refrigerator ($2,700) sports a built-in 8-inch LCD touchscreen on the left-hand door that
supports Pandora, WeatherBug, Twitter, Google Calendar, a slideshow viewer for Picasa images and several more
apps -- with more in the works.
But once IoT use is widespread, the volume of data that will be generated will be thousands
of times what we have today, so the processing technology "needs to be thousands of times
more capable," adds Williams. "Is that possible? Yes."
The processors may be capable, "but at what point do we run out of bandwidth?" IBM's Frase
asks. To avoid that, the information must be filtered in some way. IBM is working on stream
processing (to discern signal from noise using rudimentary analytics), and is doing other work
at the device level to make the current bandwidth more effective. The goal, Frase says, is to
"make it more affordable to deploy devices."
Meanwhile, the devices being attached to IoT will need new user interfaces, which must be
intuitive and not require new behavior from the users, notes Burney. The basic technology,
the interfaces and even the procedures for initializing new devices will involve new
specializations that will require extensive industry partnerships, she predicts.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9221614/Today_... 16-Nov-11
Today, the Internet -- tomorrow, the Internet of Things?
Page 6 of 6
Privacy and security
Whatever the challenges and advantages of the IoT, users will want their data to remain
private. There appears to be no ready answer as to how that can be assured.
"We're not there yet," says MIT's Schuster of the necessary security environment. "Basic email is still getting hacked and we've had that for 25 years."
Cisco's Evans agrees. "We need to make sure that we add all the appropriate security
overlays -- that needs to be part of the architecture and not an afterthought."
Meanwhile, "Could you hack into your power meter and get through to the nuclear power
plant at the other end of the line?" asks Brisbourne. "To be perfectly honest, there are
projects at the federal level where they have people trying to do just that and find where the
security holes actually lead."
There is already a European Commission task force studying
expected IoT privacy issues, says Dan Caprio, a former Federal
Trade Commission official who is now a strategic advisor at the
Washington law firm of McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP. Last year the
European Commission appointed him its transatlantic subject matter
expert on the IoT.
"There is an assumption in both Europe and the U.S. that we will have
an Internet of Things," he says, adding that the EC's taskforce is
expected to finalize its policy recommendations in 2012 or 2013. He
expects its recommendations will be heavily influenced by the guidelines approved by the
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1980, which were based on the
concepts of consumer notice, consumer choice, consumer access and security.
The U.S. will doubtless continue its grass-roots approach, he says, concentrating on the
protection of sensitive information concerning children, healthcare information and financial
information.
"The Europeans have a lot of regulations but few enforcement actions," he notes. "We (in the
U.S.) don't have the baseline regulations, but we do have effective protections against
deceptive practices."
In the U.S., advertisers may find the data gathered by the Internet of Things especially
attractive, notes Burney. It will take three to five years to work out what is legally prudent, but
"I think the result will resemble a do-not-call list, with the users given control about what data
they want to share about themselves," she says.
But with an intelligent contextual system that is positioned correctly with the right information
at the right time from the right advertiser, "it will be almost a pleasure to be advertised to,"
she predicts. "People may come to like advertisements since advertisements will have value
to them."
Cars, buildings, medicine, entertainment, even advertising -- it appears that the IoT will
eventually touch nearly all aspects of life. The end result could be as unimaginable today as
the modern electric power grid would have been to Benjamin Franklin.
Lamont Wood is a freelance writer in San Antonio.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9221614/Today_... 16-Nov-11
Page 1 of 6
Today, the Internet -- tomorrow, the Internet of
Things?
Anything with an on-off switch will be part of the network and will generate data
that takes on a life of its own.
Lamont Wood
November 9, 2011 (Computerworld)
Embedded in the heel of his shoe was an early example of the Internet of Things -- but
Andrew Duncan didn't know it at the time.
"My girlfriend was able to watch me on the computer screen as I did a five-mile walk,"
recalls Duncan, a Los Angeles technology consultant, of his participation in an Alzheimer's
fund-raising walk in November of 2010. "And the shoe will send you text message if the
battery gets low, or if the wearer
steps outside of set zones."
His GPS-equipped shoe is from GTX
Corp. in Los Angeles, and costs
$299 plus a monthly wireless
subscription. This is an example of
the widely predicted Internet of
Things (IoT), where anything with
intelligence (including machines,
roads and buildings) will have an
online presence, generating data
that could be put to uses currently
unimagined. Industry watchers
disagree only on how far along we
are -- and which science-fiction
setting best depicts what's coming.
(See sidebar.)
"Anything intelligent would have an online presence," says Sam Lucero, analyst at ABI
Research in Oyster Bay, N.Y.
Dave Evans, chief futurist at Cisco,
agrees. He predicts 50 billion connected
devices by 2020, and social networks to
connect them. "In the coming years,
anything that has an on-off switch will
be on the network," he says. "I foresee
it in just about every industry and
Clashing sci-fi scenarios
If the Internet of Things continues its current
rate of progress, three works of fiction
frequently cited by the sources for this story
might prove to be prophetic:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9221614/Today_... 16-Nov-11
Today, the Internet -- tomorrow, the Internet of Things?
Page 2 of 6
stream of life."
The deluge has already begun.
"There are several industries where IoT
is happening, and some where it is a
pipe dream," says Steve Hilton at
Analysis Mason, a technology
consulting firm in London. It is
happening in energy and utilities,
automobiles and transportation, and
security and surveillance. There's a
"tiny bit in healthcare," he adds. If you
include e-readers like Kindle, it is
happening in the consumer field.
Where it is not happening today, he
says, is in household white goods, such
as kitchen appliances. "The vendors
want them, but I don't think there'll be
much of a market," Hilton says. "If it
costs an extra $150, would you buy it?
In this case technology is ahead of
market demand."
z Minority Report, the 2002 movie starring
Tom Cruise in which the main character
is (amidst chase scenes) greeted with
personalized messages from automated
displays as he enters retail
establishments.
z Rainbows End, the 2006 novel by
Vernor Vinge in which the public
infrastructure and most individuals
(through sensors in their clothes) are
instrumented, and people can interact
with the resulting augmented reality
thanks to display devices built into
contact lenses.
z Nineteen Eighty-Four, the 1948 novel by
George Orwell depicting a repressive
totalitarian state in which, among other
things, pervasive technology is used to
keep the inhabitants under constant
surveillance.
New York University photography professor Wafaa Bilal displays the digital camera mount he had implanted in the
back of his head in December 2010. The concept of the project was to capture images objectively, without the
interference of a viewfinder, according to Bilal. Images from his camera have been streamed over the Internet, but
Bilal's body has had problems accepting the implant. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi
Katharine Frase, vice president at IBM Research, wonders what business models could be
developed if the washing machine, the thermostat and the water heater could be managed
together, by either the consumer or a third party. "We see a willingness by people to share
information about themselves if they are going to get something back. If there is some
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9221614/Today_... 16-Nov-11
Today, the Internet -- tomorrow, the Internet of Things?
Page 3 of 6
benefit, like lowering the power bill, from you knowing that I am taking a shower, then it might
be OK."
"The investments are being made now," adds Kevin Dallas, Microsoft's manager of Windows
Embedded products, though he declined to give specific examples. "We are seeing it across
every industry, and we will start to see the results in the next two to three years."
Dallas foresees several possible near-future scenarios based on the IoT:
z As a member of a loyalty program, you send your shopping list to a store. You are given an RFID tag
on arrival, and networked digital display signs in the store direct you through the aisles, from item to
item, to find what you need.
z In other stores, signs size you up as you approach them on the basis of your height and clothing and
then display promotions that are assumed to be appropriate to you.
z In any store, digital signage offers promotions based on real-time events, such as sales volumes or
the weather.
z Your refrigerator monitors its contents and makes restocking suggestions. (Refrigerators with
connectivity are already on the market, including one from Samsung, but Hilton's sense is that there
is currently no market demand.)
z Your car tracks where it has gone and where it is going, predicts where it will go next and has
suggestions ready if you ask for the nearest gas station, using data from the cloud. (Toyota and
Microsoft are already building such a service.)
z Your car additionally monitors its internal functions and offers maintenance advice, as the OnStar
remote diagnostics facility already does for General Motors and, now, other makers' cars.
z Your car's black-box data can be submitted to your insurance company in an effort to get reduced
rates, assuming that data constitutes evidence of safe driving. A number of car insurance firms are
already offering usage-based policies, sometimes based on data gathered by an instrument mounted
on the car, as with the Snapshot program from Progressive Casualty Insurance Company.
z Your car can send you a notice if your teenager drives it over a certain speed, or through a specified
"geo-fence," as can now be done with certain add-on devices.
Other sources predict hospital beds with so much instrumentation that no sensors need to be
attached to the patient, as shown in this research.
"After three or four years it will go beyond retail, and after 10 years our whole lives will be
different from what we can imagine now," predicts Kneko Burney, strategist at Compass
Intelligence, a consulting firm in Scottsdale, Ariz. "In 10 years it will not be strange to have a
cell phone earpiece embedded in your ear."
In China, Premier Wen Jiabao has
made the Internet of Things a
national goal, notes MIT Prof.
Edmund W. Schuster, who works
in the university's Auto ID Center.
"The Chinese see it as
fundamental part of a harmonious
society, especially as it would
make services easier to coordinate
in dense cities," he says.
Additionally, the municipal
government of Wuxi (also
rendered Wu-Shi), a suburb of
Shanghai, has announced
intentions to build an IoT-based
theme park. "It is expected to
become a travel destination of [a]
new generation for [sic] Internet
By the numbers
Steve Hilton at Analysis Mason, a technology consulting firm in
London, forecasts a grand scale for the Internet of Things.
Here's what he's expecting.
In the energy industry, Hilton figures there should be 22 million
connected residential utility meters by the end of 2011, and the
figure should grow by 50% yearly for the next 10 years. The
meters, part of the "smart grid" trend, report power
consumption in near real time through wireless, landline or
data-over-powerline connections, allowing better management
of the power grid, he explains.
In transportation, there should be 30.8 million device
connections worldwide, mostly used to track the location of
trucks, and growth should be 27% yearly. In security and
surveillance, there should be 20.6 million connected devices,
counting both residential and industrial installations, with a
growth rate of 37%.
In healthcare there should be 1.5 million devices at the end of
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9221614/Today_... 16-Nov-11
Today, the Internet -- tomorrow, the Internet of Things?
users, an offline spiritual home,
and an entertainment center,"
according to a press release from
city officials.
M2M roots
Page 4 of 6
the year, with a growth rate of 20% to 25%. The devices are
usually worn by a patient to monitor a chronic condition, such
as a device that advises a heart disease patient when to take
medicine. Healthcare is under-represented because of the
amount of testing that a medical device must undergo before it
can be marketed, Hilton notes.
As for transportation, a full range of tracking and maintenance
monitoring instruments should soon be available in the
consumer car market, he suggests. "All the major car-makers
are on top of this and deciding on solutions," he says.
The IoT got its start about 15 years
ago with the idea of using
machine-to-machine (M2M)
technologies to monitor remote assets, mostly over now-defunct proprietary networks,
explains Alex Brisbourne, head of KORE Telematics, an M2M wireless service provider in
Atlanta.
The change to the IoT started in 2001, "when we started to see IP (Internet Protocol) offered
through cellular networks," he recalls.
"Internet of Things is a slightly newer phrase that means the same thing as M2M," agrees Bill
Ingle, an analyst at Beecham Research in Boston. "The carriers have gotten interested in
M2M in the last two years as another source of revenue, as the voice market has started to
saturate."
Lucero at ABI Research adds that that there is considerable overlap among the Internet of
Things, M2M, RFID, smart meters, various sensor networks, building and industrial control
systems, and home automation.
The technology
As for the necessary sensor, transmission and processing technologies, "There are no showstoppers," says Evans. However, it would be advisable to perfect ways for the sensors to
"harvest" energy from their environments to avoid reliance on batteries, he adds. The other
big enabler will be the spread of IPv6, as that addressing scheme offers enough potential
Internet addresses to give every atom on the face of the earth its own address, Evans notes.
"There are no technical barriers," agrees Burney. The limiting factor is the cost of the micro
components, the bandwidth of the wireless networks, business strategies and the ability of
humans to absorb that much information, he adds.
HP Labs is currently developing nanotechnology sensors for IoT use, says Stan Williams,
senior HP Fellow and director of the Nanotechnology Research Group at HP Labs. So far his
lab has developed a MEMS-based device for detecting vibration and movement, which can
sense vibration on three axes and rotation on three axes. HP Labs is also working on taste
and smell sensors based on laser scattering. They are sensitive to one part per trillion, and
can be used to identify chemicals and biological species, Williams says.
Both are about one square millimeter, meaning that they would be very inexpensive to mass
produce, he adds. Other types of sensors needed to complete the IoT, such as for pressure
and light, are already available on the open market, he adds.
In the next year HP Labs will be mounting its first big project using IoT technology, a seismic
imaging project for Shell Oil, giving transparency to the top 20 kilometers of the Earth's crust
over an area of ten square kilometers. "We'll be doing the same for the Earth as has already
been done with imaging inside human beings," Williams says.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9221614/Today_... 16-Nov-11
Today, the Internet -- tomorrow, the Internet of Things?
Page 5 of 6
The Samsung RSG309 LCD Refrigerator ($2,700) sports a built-in 8-inch LCD touchscreen on the left-hand door that
supports Pandora, WeatherBug, Twitter, Google Calendar, a slideshow viewer for Picasa images and several more
apps -- with more in the works.
But once IoT use is widespread, the volume of data that will be generated will be thousands
of times what we have today, so the processing technology "needs to be thousands of times
more capable," adds Williams. "Is that possible? Yes."
The processors may be capable, "but at what point do we run out of bandwidth?" IBM's Frase
asks. To avoid that, the information must be filtered in some way. IBM is working on stream
processing (to discern signal from noise using rudimentary analytics), and is doing other work
at the device level to make the current bandwidth more effective. The goal, Frase says, is to
"make it more affordable to deploy devices."
Meanwhile, the devices being attached to IoT will need new user interfaces, which must be
intuitive and not require new behavior from the users, notes Burney. The basic technology,
the interfaces and even the procedures for initializing new devices will involve new
specializations that will require extensive industry partnerships, she predicts.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9221614/Today_... 16-Nov-11
Today, the Internet -- tomorrow, the Internet of Things?
Page 6 of 6
Privacy and security
Whatever the challenges and advantages of the IoT, users will want their data to remain
private. There appears to be no ready answer as to how that can be assured.
"We're not there yet," says MIT's Schuster of the necessary security environment. "Basic email is still getting hacked and we've had that for 25 years."
Cisco's Evans agrees. "We need to make sure that we add all the appropriate security
overlays -- that needs to be part of the architecture and not an afterthought."
Meanwhile, "Could you hack into your power meter and get through to the nuclear power
plant at the other end of the line?" asks Brisbourne. "To be perfectly honest, there are
projects at the federal level where they have people trying to do just that and find where the
security holes actually lead."
There is already a European Commission task force studying
expected IoT privacy issues, says Dan Caprio, a former Federal
Trade Commission official who is now a strategic advisor at the
Washington law firm of McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP. Last year the
European Commission appointed him its transatlantic subject matter
expert on the IoT.
"There is an assumption in both Europe and the U.S. that we will have
an Internet of Things," he says, adding that the EC's taskforce is
expected to finalize its policy recommendations in 2012 or 2013. He
expects its recommendations will be heavily influenced by the guidelines approved by the
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1980, which were based on the
concepts of consumer notice, consumer choice, consumer access and security.
The U.S. will doubtless continue its grass-roots approach, he says, concentrating on the
protection of sensitive information concerning children, healthcare information and financial
information.
"The Europeans have a lot of regulations but few enforcement actions," he notes. "We (in the
U.S.) don't have the baseline regulations, but we do have effective protections against
deceptive practices."
In the U.S., advertisers may find the data gathered by the Internet of Things especially
attractive, notes Burney. It will take three to five years to work out what is legally prudent, but
"I think the result will resemble a do-not-call list, with the users given control about what data
they want to share about themselves," she says.
But with an intelligent contextual system that is positioned correctly with the right information
at the right time from the right advertiser, "it will be almost a pleasure to be advertised to,"
she predicts. "People may come to like advertisements since advertisements will have value
to them."
Cars, buildings, medicine, entertainment, even advertising -- it appears that the IoT will
eventually touch nearly all aspects of life. The end result could be as unimaginable today as
the modern electric power grid would have been to Benjamin Franklin.
Lamont Wood is a freelance writer in San Antonio.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9221614/Today_... 16-Nov-11
