Securing IOT Sensors

Consider hw many IOTs you have.

Standards to Secure the Sensors That Power IoT

By Logan Kugler

Communications of the ACM, June 2023, Vol. 66 No. 6, Pages 14-16 10.1145/3591215

The use of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors has exploded in popularity in recent years as cheap, effective IoT sensors make it possible to connect devices that do everything from regulating smart home features to monitoring health and fitness using wearable devices.

IoT sensors also are increasingly making their way into business use-cases. In the industrial IoT, sensors are used in many different contexts, including to control and monitor machinery and to regulate core infrastructure systems.

IoT device and sensor usage has accelerated even more with advances in 5G connectivity and the shift to remote work, says Willi Nelson, chief information security officer for Operational Technologies at Fortinet, a cybersecurity firm. In fact, the number of IoT devices in use is projected to nearly triple to 29 billion in 2030 compared to 9.7 billion today, according to data from Statista.

Yet as IoT adoption increases, IoT sensors and devices also are becoming more popular targets for cybercriminals.

"They remain a prime target of cybercriminals as a fast path to gain access to enterprise networks," says Nelson. Fortinet found 93% of companies using IoT sensors in some capacity had one or more cybersecurity intrusions in the past year. A full 78% had experienced three or more, and these attacks increasingly are targeting industrial IoT operations, too.

That is because IoT is a fundamentally different technology than existing systems—a technology with plenty of attack surfaces. Each sensor and device connected to an IoT network presents a possible security risk, opening up an attack vector into an individual or company's hardware, software, and/or data.

In theory, IoT security standards are supposed to mitigate cybersecurity risks by encouraging companies to follow best security practices when designing and deploying IoT sensors and devices.

However, in practice, the standards available to manufacturers and companies using IoT technology do not always offer sufficient protection, are not always designed specifically for IoT, and are not always followed.

Despite the vulnerability of IoT devices, quite shockingly, there is no single standard for IoT security.

No Standard Set of Standards

IoT sensors carry a variety of unique risks because they are connected to larger sensitive networks. Medical IoT devices handle sensitive and often legally protected patient and hospital data. Industrial IoT sensors connect to other critical manufacturing equipment. IoT sensors in energy offer a gateway into critical private and public power infrastructures.

One prominent example is the damage caused by the malware named "Mirai" in 2016. Mirai infected computers and devices, which in turn targeted IoT devices and sensors. Once infected, IoT devices were used to temporarily take down many popular websites, including Twitter, Netflix, and Airbnb.  ... ' 

Right to Repair?

Expected perhaps, but quite complex in planning. 

An Emergent Legal Right to Repair Electronic Devices

By Pamela Samuelson

Communications of the ACM, November 2022, Vol. 65 No. 11, Pages 22-25 10.1145/3563966

In the not too distant past, anyone who owned a machine or other device—whether it be a radio, a typewriter, a bicycle, or a car—had an unquestionable right to repair that device if and when it broke down. Often owners could take their devices apart, diagnose problems, and fix or replace the broken parts themselves. Moreover, if the owners lacked skills to repair their own devices, they could take the devices to independent repair shops. It was once common for manufacturers to provide schematics to aid repair efforts and attract customers to purchase their devices.

Well, that was then, and this is now. With software now pervasively embedded in all manner of devices—cars, tractors, toasters, and smartphones, just to name a few—it has become difficult, and sometimes impossible, for owners of devices to repair them when they break down or have them fixed by independent repair shops. Often this is because parts, tools, and schematics are unavailable. But because embedded software is copyright-protected and often subject to license and technical restrictions on reverse engineering, repair, and maintenance, repairing your own devices or hiring others to repair them may also be legally risky .... ' 

Bruce Schneier: Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival

 Just now reading a review copy of Bruce Schneier's:  "Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-Connected World"    His latest security book.  So far and as usual very usefully informative.  Don't like the title.  Books should go for at least generally truthful titles. See also his blog: https://www.schneier.com/  which covers much of the same territory, and also includes much added up to date external comments.   While a book in this space cannot be completely up to date,  the book also contains a ton of supporting notes.   Review will be out by early June.

From the Book Quote:

The Internet is powerful, but it is not safe.

As "smart" devices proliferate the risks will get worse, unless we act now.

From driverless cars to smart thermostats, from autonomous stock-trading systems to drones equipped with their own behavioral algorithms, the Internet now has direct effects on the physical world. Forget data theft: cutting-edge digital attackers can now literally crash your car, pacemaker, and home security system, as well as everyone else’s/

In Click Here to Kill Everybody, best-selling author Bruce Schneier explores the risks and security implications of our new, hyper-connected era, and lays out common-sense policies that will allow us to enjoy the benefits of this omnipotent age without falling prey to the consequences of its insecurity.  ... "

Further Emerging Smart Toothbrush

Showing how package goods, like Colgate and my former employer P&G are building smart devices to improve consumer health processes. 

Smart Device Push Brings IT, R&D Teams Together  By The Wall Street Journal  in ACM

Information Technology (IT) staffers at consumer packaged goods companies increasingly are working with research and development (R&D) teams to develop more connected devices.

To develop Colgate's new smart toothbrush, the R&D team worked on the brush head and sensors, while the IT team developed the underlying application, which uses machine learning to analyze data collected by the toothbrush to make recommendations for brushing better.

Colgate's Mike Crowe said, "It is really about maximizing the use of the combined skills."

The IT and R&D teams at Proctor & Gamble (P&G) also have collaborated on a smart toothbrush, a personalized skin-care analyzer, and a facial-hair style assistant.

McKinsey’s Ed Roth said teaming IT and R&D is not without its challenges. “It’s not a natural pairing,” Roth said, because each unit is staffed by people from a different work culture.

From The Wall Street Journal

Rethinking PCs and smartphones in a Pandemic World

Mobility and more, powerful tools and some loss of privacy.     Other implications for their use.

Rethinking PCs and smartphones in a post-COVID-19 world in Computerworld

We are still early into the COVID-19 disruption, but I have little doubt the world will be dramatically changed as a result. The tech hardware world that will exist post-pandemic will have a lot to do with what emerges at Blackberry, Cisco, HP, and IBM.
     
Personal technology started with terminals, typewriters and wired analog phones. Security was a simple concern, mobility was something out of science fiction, and we pretty much leased everything. Put  differently, everything was a service. From the 1960s until now, we have been trying – largely unsuccessfully – to get back to that simpler time when we didn’t have to be a technician, things just worked, and we could focus more on our businesses, less on and keeping technology running. 

[ Further reading: How AR and VR will change enterprise mobility ]

As the world moved from mainframes to PCs, from wired phones to smartphones, and as we layered on complexity, we often lost focus on what was important. For instance, 50-plus years ago our biggest driving concern was grandparents – who liked to look at us in the back seat while they drove – and drunk drivers. Now, we fear death from the person one car over looking at a smartphone, not the road.

We spend time now with our faces buried in screens: big screens, movie screens, small screens – especially now. The COVID-19 event, and we are only coming to the end of the beginning, is likely to be with us for at least a year longer, and it is already changing priorities. We are more concerned about people around us; we need to engage from a distance because we are working remotely. We aren’t traveling or going out, so sharing everything we do on Social Media isn’t as interesting. And we look longingly at movies, TV, and pictures of a world that once was. ... 

Microsoft Uses IOTs with Advanced Features

Impressive direction by Microsoft,with useful details.

Microsoft doubles down on Internet of Things with new features to simplify building connected devices       By  Nat Levy  

Microsoft today announced a series of new Internet of Things tools and features to make it easier for customers to build connected devices and run them on the tech giant’s cloud platform.

The uniting theme behind the new features is to make IoT, a futuristic but challenging technology, more accessible. IoT has reached a tipping point, with more mainstream customers flocking to the technology, Sam George, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Azure IoT, said in a briefing with reporters.

“You’ve seen a bunch of innovators and early adopters picking up IoT,” George said. “And what we see is that now many of the early majority customers are starting to show up. And the conversations that we have with the early majority customers are much different than we had with the innovators.”

George cited a recent IoT survey from Microsoft that found 88 percent of the business owners saw the technology as critical to their future success. However, nearly half of them cited a lack of skilled workers to build IoT solutions as a hurdle to embracing the technology. That’s a big reason why simplicity and accessibility has become a focal point of Microsoft’s IoT efforts.

Here’s a look at some of the key announcements from Microsoft this morning. George published a blog post with a full rundown of the new features. .... "

IEEE Roadmap Reports for Devices and Systems

Am a long time member of IEEE,  a wealth of useful information.  Often reference their publications here.   The newest set of such publications.

IEEE Releases the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS)

PISCATAWAY, NEW JERSEY, June 18. 2018 – IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for humanity, today announced the release of the 2017 edition of the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS), building upon 15 years of projecting technology needs for evolving the semiconductor and computer industries. The IRDS is an IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) Industry Connections (IC) Program sponsored by the IEEE Rebooting Computing (IEEE RC) Initiative, which has taken a lead in building a comprehensive view of the devices, components, systems, architecture, and software that comprise the global computing ecosystem. .... " 

Free, downloadable roadmap reports: 
    https://irds.ieee.org/roadmap-2017

Embedding AI into Tiny Devices

We should ask what AI means here.  I am assuming training and applying machine learning architecture. Then the power of the systems involved may be key.

Microsoft Researchers in India, US Embedding AI Into Tiny Devices 
A team of 30 researchers at Microsoft labs in Redmond and Benguluru are busy developing a new class of machine-learning software and tools to embed artificial intelligence (AI) onto bread-crumb size computer processors.

The project is part of a paradigm shift within the technology industry that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella described recently, by saying that "We're moving from what is today's mobile-first, cloud-first world to a new world that is going to be made up of an intelligent cloud and intelligent edge".

"Creating the intelligent edge is a step toward realising the promise of a world populated with tiny intelligent devices at every turn - embedded in our clothes, scattered around our homes and offices," said John Roach, a world-renowned expert in AI and machine learning, in a Microsoft blog post.

The researchers imagine all sorts of intelligent devices that could be created, from smart soil-moisture sensors deployed for precision irrigation on remote farms to brain implants that warn users of impending seizures so that they can get to a safe place and call a caregiver.

The computer scientists and software engineers are taking top-down and bottom-up approaches to the challenge of deploying machine-learning models onto resource-constrained devices.

The top-down approach involves developing algorithms that compress machine-learning models trained for the cloud to run efficiently on devices such as the Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi Zero. ... " 

How Microsoft Supports a Future with Countless Devices

In the NYT.      " .... Technology now allows for lots of powerful, compelling computing devices in a wide range of sizes and shapes. Just about everyone in the industry believes the smartphone will remain the dominant computing device for the foreseeable future. But second place looks entirely up for grabs, and the giants are jockeying to make that one other device that we’ll all use along with our phones. .. " 

Intel Corp on Device Reliance

Correspondent John Stine on devices and more, This comes to mind as I am about to switch phones and add a new communications channel.

" ... During a separate seminar at that same technology summit, Jon Stine -- Intel's global director of sales and strategy for retail, hospitality and consumer goods -- outlined why retailers are spending so much to perfect their mobile and multichannel shopping strategies.

Americans are spending 9.9 hours per day on screens (mobile phone, TV, personal computer and tablet, among others). Intel data reveal that 60 percent to 65 percent of U.S. consumers begin their shopping by going online.

Still, as much as 90 percent of purchases are made in stores. That means serving customers online and in stores is a must for retailers like Wal-Mart, Stine said.

"Being agile and flexible has never been more important for retailers than right now," he added, noting that the mobile phone has become "the remote control for your daily life."

As we become accustomed to websites that load and refresh in 20 milliseconds, saving time has become as high a priority as saving money.

Brown noted that through its app, and the ability for customers to order and pay without ever interacting with a person, Starbucks has shaved a full minute off the time it usually takes to get in and out with a cup of coffee. That adds up to about 5 million minutes a month being saved.

More and more consumers are demanding that the in-store shopping experience be as fast as it is online. We're looking for what Stine described as the "living, breathing Internet." ... " 

Trillion Devices at Hand

What so we expect to do with so many devices, and many more connections?  Over many more slices of time and location?   In CWorld:  " ... Forget thinking about the Internet of Things where your coffee maker and refrigerator are connected. By 2025, we could very well live in a trillion-device world. .... That's the prediction from Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California at Berkeley.

"Smartness can be embedded everywhere," said Sangiovanni-Vincentelli. "The entire environment is going to be full of sensors of all kinds. Chemical sensors, cameras and microphones of all types and shapes. Sensors will check the quality of the air and temperatures. Microphones around your environment will listen to you giving commands." ... " 

Integrating Smart Devices

In CWorld: Testing Hubs, a case and physical study:

" .. Testing the Internet of Things: Can smart devices be united into an integrated whole? ...  We try out the Revolv hub to see if it can really make independent smart devices work together intelligently. The results? Mixed..... "  

Wirelessly Charging Devices from your Washer

An unexpected thought covered in Engadget.    " ...   WattUp technology promises to deliver power over the same radio bands as a WiFi router and is apparently able to charge a smartphone from distances of up to 15 feet. The idea, at this early stage, is to cram these power transmitters into Haier's refrigerators, washing machines and microwaves, so that you can re-juice your phone while you wait for your dinner and do your laundry. .. " 

Cross Targeting Multiple Devices

In CLickZ:  What it is and why the hype?   Most of us today use multiple devices.  " ... Cross-device targeting, the ability to serve targeted advertising to consumers across multiple digital devices, is an emerging technology challenge and will be a hot topic this year and beyond.

Cookies and mobile IDs (UUID, Apple’s IFDA, etc.) allow advertisers to track and serve targeted advertising to uniquely identifiable users but only on a single device or even on a specific app where the ID or cookie is available. Broadly speaking, cookies enable targeting on desktop and laptop browsers and mobile IDs enable targeting on smartphones, tablets, and apps. ... " 

Millennials and Their Devices

In Clomedia.  Good piece.  It has long been suggested that new generations are so used to new tech that they don't need to adapt to it at all.  Often touted as truth.  With implications for training, style assumptions, device choices.   I had always suspected that this is not as true as we have thought.   And unscientifically observed that case in the organization.  This article looks at surveys that seem to say this.  Self reported, it seems. " ...  Our survey results pushed back on this categorization. The survey indicates that it is the tech-savvy millennials who are feeling the most overwhelmed from being always on versus their older colleagues. Information overload was cited by 41 percent of millennials, versus just 31 percent among older generations, while technology overload was cited by 38 percent of them compared to 20 percent of older workers. ... "

Blue Tooth on the Rise

From BBC Future:  Makes sense that since we have more devices, letting them network among themselves is getting more popular.  This article is a nice survey of what is happening.

Measuring Stress Levels in an Unmanageable World

An insightful piece in the HBR.  Which came up in a lunch conversation today.   Many of us are managing multiple devices now.   Will the number of devices creep upwards or downwards?  Do we need device free zones?  An unmanageable world that can be best described by the language of addiction and being chained to a (virtual) desk.  Ironically the article also mentions an App that claims to be able to detect your current stress level via heart rate variability.  If successful, this will be another example of why the devices may well prevail.