What is IoT?
Internet of Things or IoT is an abstract concept but one that has been gaining a lot of popularity in recent years. Is hard to give an exact definition of what IoT is, because is easy to be confused on what IoT is and what IoT is not.
Now, is common to find a lot of smart devices around us, devices that give us a lot of information about our body, environment, even about our home status. Smartwatches, smartphones, smart TV, smart fridge etc., most of these devices have internet connection and we can monitor them remotely. People who go out running use their smartwatches to monitor their heart frequency, speed and distance in real time, then, all the data is located in an app and then backup in internet, so people can access it no matter where they are.
People can control things at their home even if they are in other places, they can control the home temperature, turn on or turn off devices remotely, like lights, TV's, open close doors or blackouts.
A lot of people think that all these things connected to internet are the meaning of IoT, but they are wrong. These are things connected to internet but not Internet of Things. IoT is not refer to things connected to internet, IoT refers to things no matter what, connected to internet and have communication with other things, no matter if they are of different brands.
Imagine your air conditioning is programmed to turn on every work day at 19:00, but for some reason one day you are not going to your home at that time, the air conditioning is going to turn on because is a programmed hour, you can turn off remotely, no problem, but IoT, is the “ability” of the air conditioning to ask to your smartwatch, if you are close to your home, the smartwatch can say “yes” or “no” based on the GPS location for example, depends on that answer, the air conditioning is going to turn on or not, and maybe if you are in a warm city, the smartwatch can tell to the air conditioning the external temperature, because you smartwatch is connected with your smartphone, and based on your heart rate it can know if you were doing some workout and suggest a certain comfort temperature, and why not, turn on the lights of your home. The result of this communication between things is your comfort at home without having to do anything.
At this point we can better understand what Internet of Things means, and the difference between Internet of Things and things connected to internet.
Security
Security is a big challenge for IoT, the importance of the data that these devices are handling is very high, remember the above example of the smartwatch telling your location to the air conditioner, imagine that someone else can access to this data. Your home address, your office address, the schedule of your daily activities can be exposed.
Critical data without security could be a bad think. These days our data has taken great relevance, companies use our data to create consumption models, statistics and more. Some data policies help us to keep our data safe and anonymous, but these policies cannot help us if our data are been stolen before these companies catch them.
Professional IoT devices can be hacked to make free charge services, control systems could be used to let pass some unauthorized people to restricted areas, turn off security systems and more.
In general, the problem is that those who develop home appliances and make them connected face realities of a brand-new world they know nothing about. They ultimately find themselves in a situation similar to that of an experienced basketball player sitting through a chess match with a real grand master. (Kaspersky Daily, 2019).
In users site things gets worse, because the final costumer has no idea of security, for them a smart toaster is just a toaster with steroids.
Nowadays there are some security companies making efforts on create security standards that can be apply to IoT devices making them safer.
Some IoT devices implements transfer protocols between devices, encrypted data is transmitted between devices, and data policies help us as costumers to maintain our data save.
Smart Cities
A smart city is a city that uses technology to create better infrastructure for citizens. From public transport, energy saving, sustainability or efficiency in all its aspects.
How it works? Smart cities use a lot of IoT devices with a specific assignment, for example, if you want to go to the park in your car, you can use a parking app to reserve a parking space, or take a look where a parking space is available, you can use the bus app to know where the next bus is and how much time it will take to be at a specific bus stop, using an IoT device located in the bus, smart irrigation system that keep in control the amount of water used and more.
For all these example cities must have an IoT network because we want to keep our smart irrigation system connected to the weather station to know is there will be a rainy day or not.
Security takes more importance in these public networks because we do not want to have all these data unprotected, and we just want to share specific data.
If I want to create my personal irrigation system for my personal garden, I want to use the weather information in my personal system, so I can use the public weather data to know this information, but just this specific information of that device. The advantage of that is that we can re-use information from other device without the need to buy our own device.
Governments around the world are looked of this concept because a smart city is more productive than a regular one, it is true that this kind of improvement is expensive, and no all the cities have the resources to do that, but the amount of smart cities will increase.
Up to this point we have only learned how the IoT makes our lives easier and comfortable, but IoT is not just for comfort, like Forbes magazine said:
A combination of cyber-physical systems, the Internet of Things and the Internet of Systems make Industry 4.0 possible and the smart factory a reality. As a result of the support of smart machines that keep getting smarter as they get access to more data, our factories will become more efficient and productive and less wasteful. (Forbes, 2018).
The use of the machine learning and data science, combined with the use of the IoT devices make possible the fourth industrial revolution, today there are organizations that deny the use and scope of the IoT technologies, but several others are making changes to improve their business and finding the talent and knowledge to adopt it for their business.
An industrial example that shows the importance of this is that: an African gold mine thanks of the data collected by their sensor, founds problems with the oxygen levels during leaching. Fixing this increased yield by 3.7 percent, worth up to $20 million annually.
IoT and other technologies makes sense when we see the way how they can help us to improve our daily activities and helps to improve our companies, in next year, it will be common to find a lot of companies using this technologies and security failures will be decrease, IoT devices will be more cheaper and organizations that not accept this new industrial revolution are destinated to disappear.
Bibliography
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