{"id":35583,"date":"2019-06-14T19:31:16","date_gmt":"2019-06-14T11:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=35583"},"modified":"2019-06-19T11:24:55","modified_gmt":"2019-06-19T03:24:55","slug":"managing-the-explosion-of-iot-and-iiot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2019\/06\/14\/managing-the-explosion-of-iot-and-iiot\/","title":{"rendered":"Managing the explosion of IoT and IIoT"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Lionel Snell
Editor, NetEvents<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There has been, and there will continue to be a whole lot of discussion in ITC circles about how to manage the explosion (or should we say tsunami?) of devices that are forming the Internet of Things (IoT). Little wonder, because this particular explosion is barely controlled by the IT industry \u2013 so much of it is arriving left field from other business sectors. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous big, impactful explosions \u2013 personal computers,\nnetworks, smartphones, the Cloud etc \u2013 have been created and driven by IT. The\nindustry was responsible for persuading people to buy these products and\nresponsible for building and delivering them. But in the case of IoT the\nindustry is offering as much a service as a product \u2013 and there is a whole\npopulation of devices out there just waiting to be fitted with chips and\nconnected to the IoT. Sell a PC or smartphone and you are selling a complete\npackage that complies with a host of regulations and standards, but sell 5G\nconnectivity and you may not be certain if it is for a medical device, for\ntracking containers, for a utility meter, a drone controller or whatever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the IT industry is feeling anxious about opening wide the\nInternet to a vast population of newcomers. Kevin Restivo, IDC\u2019s Research\nManager, European Enterprise Mobility led a conference session at NetEvents\nEMEA IT Spotlight entitled They’re\nEverywhere! Managing the Incredible Explosion of IoT and IIoT Devices.<\/em>  His introductory presentation was summed up\nin the figure below: \u201cFraming the market \u2013 that’s what we do IDC. We size,\nforecast markets, describe the drivers and inhibitors.  At IDC we believe IoT is one of the fastest\ngrowing markets or collection of technologies relative to the ICT spectrum\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFirst and foremost, what does IDC mean by the Internet of Things? \u2026 It is a network of uniquely identifiable endpoints\u2026 that autonomously connect bidirectionally using IP connectivity. The ecosystem is really a complex mix of technologies and services\u2026 server, storage, analytics, IT services, security and a range of other technologies\u2026 essentially a wide span of the ICT spectrum\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This diversity makes it harder to pin down the elements of\nspending, he explained. Up till now, about a third has been on IoT devices and\nsimilar amounts on software and services. But in the future forecasts he\nexpected much more spending on analytics, as business begins to extract value from its\nIoT and optimize its processes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As to drivers: obviously the explosion of devices is a major\nfactor, but complexity might sound more like an inhibitor, until you consider\nthe vast array of systems and protocols involved: \u201cThat complexity is driving a\nlot of spending\u201d. The third driver, Enterprise Readiness, reflects that almost\nlimitless population of devices and systems already out there and waiting to\nget connected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As to the inhibitors, lead by security fears, he explained:\n\u201cLack of coordination between operations and IT\nis very much an inhibitor to deployment. Close collaboration between IT\nand operational departments is necessary and yet it doesn\u2019t happen. Everyone\nwants to protect their fiefdoms or they’re simply not able or willing to\ncooperate\u2026 IT is often left behind\nduring the project planning and budgeting and the piloting. That lack of\ncoordination can really stall the successful deployment of IoT initiatives\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that brief sketch, Kevin, asked the panel for their\nviews on drivers and inhibitors, but it quickly became necessary to break down\nthe IoT into broad categories. Peter Galvin, Chief Strategy and Marketing\nOfficer, nCipher Security, compared the fast growing consumer segment, with\nvery little focus on security, to the Industrial IoT (IIoT) \u2013 which is \u201ca\nlittle more thoughtful\u201d \u2013 as well as the already highly regulated medical\nsegment, used both by consumers and healthcare professionals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kevin suggested putting aside the consumer market for this session\nand focussing on business, government and industry. Jan Guldentops, Director,\nBA Test Labs, pointed out that there was still a massive difference between\nparking sensors \u2013 sending tiny amounts of non-critical data \u2013 and industrial\nsystems with hundreds of sensors controlling millions of dollars worth of\nequipment: \u201cIt’s like cloud all over again\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the question of security, Philip Griffiths, Head of EMEA\nPartnerships, NetFoundry, said that security was the greatest inhibitor but that\nsome organisations are actively seeking solutions: \u201cI’m working on an engagement at the moment where a Fortune 10\ncompany is rolling out an IoT solution.\nThey’re not involving IT because\nthey want to move as quickly as possible. But the partner we’re working with,\nwho’s an ISV, came to us and said, we need to make sure the solution is very\nsecure so that, when IT do come along, we can say \u2018this is more secure than your corporate network so there’s\nnothing for you to worry about\u2019. At the\nsame time, we don\u2019t want to have to manage 50,000 VPNs \u2013 so we’re going to use\nyour [NetFoundry\u2019s] solution because it automates that secure connectivity\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving on to business benefits as drivers, Professor Martin\nCurley, Director of the Digital Academy and Open Innovation, The Health Service\nExecutive, said we should expect a consumerization of healthcare on a scale to\nmatch the recent consumerization of IT. Referring a book  with the great title The Patient Will See You Now, <\/em>he suggested: \u201cwe will have patients\nroutinely showing up to their cardiologist or to their nephrologist with much\nbetter information than the consultants themselves have. The Apple Watch with\nits ECG is already an FDA-regulated device. It\ncan detect atrial fibrillation. It could\nbe lifesaving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He explained that \u2018vital signs\u2019 is the term for the key\npredictors that nurses use to determine if a patient is deteriorating and, in a\ntraditional manual system based on handwritten notes, over 50% of those scores can\nbe wrong. Whereas SyncroPhi had developed a solution to automatically connect,\ncollect and display these vital signs.\nHe saw so many diverse opportunities in healthcare: \u201cAnother company is\ndeveloping technology to track equipment\nin the ward. One of the key issues\nis there’s so much time spent by nurses and doctors looking for equipment that\nsomebody else has borrowed. They’ve developed a smart solution that\nRFID-enabled tracks where the equipment is in the wards. I can probably\ngive you 10 other examples\u2026 I think the biggest untapped\nmarket is going to be healthcare\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Galvin came up with other examples, notably industrial\nautomation: \u201cgiant wheat harvesters out in the mid-west, there’s\nnobody in those. They’re all\nremotely controlled. They’re considered an IoT device and they’re giving\ntelemetry data and also data about what’s\nthe soil like? What’s\nthe content like?\u201d He also quoted an Australian mining company automating extremely\nremote and inaccessible mining sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan Guldentops quoted smart cities: how those unpopular\ntraffic cameras, used to fine motorists, also collect vital traffic data, as do\nautomated parking systems. Philip Griffiths doubted that smart cities was such\na hot market, because it does not offer the clear revenue opportunities promised\nby an industrial manufacturing plant where, for example, thousands of cameras\ncan monitor for defects in real time and save a fortune. Guldentops reponded\nthat might be true in the US model, whereas in Europe there is serious\ngovernment money available for smartening up cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Griffiths made an interesting point about how IoT is best\nsold: not so much a product sale as bringing together an ecosystem of\ntechnology providers to deliver a full turnkey stack for the end company to pay\nfor as a service rather than assemble it themselves: \u201cit’s fundamental to IoT\nbecause otherwise it’s far too complex to pull together as one business\u201d. And Galvin referred back to the\nsheer value of data collection and collation to be analysed for scientific\nresearch that could have major applications in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael Kagan, Chief Technology Officer, Mellanox\nTechnologies, came up with a rather horrifying example of the importance of\nwell-considered policies: \u201cIf I’m building\nthe algorithm for a self-driving car I need to take into consideration the fact\nthat if I have two bicyclists in front of me and an accident is unavoidable,\nhow do I choose which one to hit?… One of the options can be, we’ll hit the one that wears a helmet because\nhe has a higher chance to\nsurvive. Once this algorithm becomes known, nobody is going to wear helmets\nanymore because you’re going to be hit by the car if you wear a helmet\u2026 Once we make the decision, we need to figure out the implications.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guldentops argued that security was not really holding back IoT, simply because not enough people were considering it. For example: \u201cA certain brand of speed cameras runs a Debian 6 operating system that hasn\u2019t been patched since I think 2010. It takes me around three and a half minutes to become root on that system\u2026 I talked to the guys and they said, we cannot patch it because we need to validate the system and every change we make the speed camera is not valid anymore. But still there are around 400 ANPR cameras in Belgium that are using it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Griffiths warned of the risks when IT networks merged with\nindustrial networks: \u201cmost of the attacks we’ve seen have been some sort of\nphishing campaign turning into malware, laterally moving from the IT network into the OT network because\nsomeone didn\u2019t think about security enough, and then blowing up a billion\ndollar steel facility\nor something as happened in Germany\na few years ago\u2026 If we\ncreate secure connectivity with software-defined perimeters, zero trust, all\nthese things, then you can get the benefits of both worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martin Curley feared that we all\u00a0 need some big catastrophe to wake up the industry and its customers: \u201cSimilar to the Boeing 737 Max with its angle of attack sensor – that is an internet of things device. For the IoT industry that is a road to Damascus moment, where software resilience and software validation has to be done in a much more thorough way\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We already have these catastrophes, notably in compromised\nhealthcare systems and Curley agreed there was severe under-resourcing:\n\u201cThere’s barely enough\nstaff to just get the systems\nfunctional never mind thinking about security\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For\nGuldentops, bug bounties was one of the best innovations within the security\nindustry in the last couple of years: \u201cyou can get a community of people who\nlike to get into your system but not break it, who do it as an intellectual\nchallenge. So, they can report their problems, earn sometimes a living with it.\nIt’s something we should start using in IoT. If\nyou’re a company developing a device and you want to put it on the\nmarket, hire one of those bug bounty companies and get some people\nto play with it, to break it\u2026 you\u2019ll know there’s a security problem in it\nbefore you roll it out to 10,000 people\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nsnag with this idea, especially in medical and industrial IoT is that it’s the\nlegacy problem.  As the devices are\nalready in place bug bounties aren\u2019t going to provide a simple solution as they\neither  can’t be patched, or it\u2019s inefficient\nto patch them, or it’s too costly to patch them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To\ndeal with this legacy problem Griffiths suggested overlaying the legacy system\nwith a secure greenfield solution. Taking Guldentops\u2019 speed cameras as an\nexample: \u201cHow do we throw NetFoundry on there so that someone can’t get into\nit? They’ve still got that underlying, flaw but you at least layer over a more\nsecure solution on that so you make it much harder\nfor someone to get access\nto that and root password\nit\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael\nKagan rounded off the session by proposing the\nneed to identify and understand the interfaces and not mix too many\nthings together: \u201cWith the segregation of the infrastructure, computing and\napplication it enables you to update these two tiers absolutely independently…\nDon\u2019t tie things too much together, so you can update them and manage them and\nprovision them independently\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The transcript of the entire discussion is available at https:\/\/www.netevents.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Debate-V-IoT-IDC-draft.pdf<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Previous big, impactful explosions \u2013 personal computers, networks, smartphones, the Cloud etc \u2013 have been created and driven by IT. The industry was responsible for persuading people to buy these products and responsible for building and delivering them. But in the case of IoT the industry is offering as much a service as a product \u2013 and there is a whole population of devices out there just waiting to be fitted with chips and connected to the IoT. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":35584,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,26],"tags":[107,148,1923,857,1130],"class_list":["post-35583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-opinions","tag-cloud","tag-cloud-computing","tag-cloud-security","tag-cloud-services","tag-cloud-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}