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.  ... ' 

On Cubesats Tech

AEROSPACE  NEWS  and an IOT Space Race

CubeSat Operators Launch an IoT Space Race New tech and lower costs make it possible to monitor devices straight from.    By Lucas Laursen

A rocket carrying CubeSats launched into Earth orbit two years ago, on 22 March 2021. Two of those CubeSats represented competing approaches to bringing the Internet of Things (IoT) to space. One, operated by Lacuna Space, uses a protocol called LoRaWAN, a long-range, low-power protocol owned by Semtech. The other, owned by Sateliot, uses the narrowband IoT protocol, following in the footsteps of OQ Technology, which launched a similar IoT satellite demonstration in 2019. And separately, in late 2022, the cellular industry standard-setter 3GPP incorporated satellite-based 5G into standard cellular service with its release 17.

In other words, there is now an IoT space race.

In addition to Lacuna and Sateliot, OQ Technology is also nipping at the heels of satellite telecom incumbents such as Iridium, Orbcomm, and Inmarsat for a share of the growing satellite-IoT subscriber market. OQ Technology has three satellites in low Earth orbit and plans to launch seven more this year, says OQ Technology’s chief innovation officer, Prasanna Nagarajan. OQ has paying customers in the oil and gas, agriculture, and transport logistics industries.

Sateliot, based in Barcelona, has the satellite it launched in 2021 in orbit and plans to launch four more this year, says Sateliot’s business development manager, Paula Caudet. The company is inviting early adopters to sample its service for free this year while it builds more coverage. “Certain use cases are fine with flybys every few hours, such as agricultural sensors,” Caudet says.

OQ Technology claims it will launch enough satellites to offer at least hourly coverage by 2024 and near-real-time coverage later that year. Sateliot is also aiming for better-than-hourly coverage sometime in 2024 and near-real-time coverage in 2025.

AEROSPACE  NEWS

CubeSat Operators Launch an IoT Space Race New tech and lower costs make it possible to monitor devices straight from orbit  ... 

A rocket carrying CubeSats launched into Earth orbit two years ago, on 22 March 2021. Two of those CubeSats represented competing approaches to bringing the Internet of Things (IoT) to space. One, operated by Lacuna Space, uses a protocol called LoRaWAN, a long-range, low-power protocol owned by Semtech. The other, owned by Sateliot, uses the narrowband IoT protocol, following in the footsteps of OQ Technology, which launched a similar IoT satellite demonstration in 2019. And separately, in late 2022, the cellular industry standard-setter 3GPP incorporated satellite-based 5G into standard cellular service with its release 17.      In other words, there is now an IoT space race.

In addition to Lacuna and Sateliot, OQ Technology is also nipping at the heels of satellite telecom incumbents such as Iridium, Orbcomm, and Inmarsat for a share of the growing satellite-IoT subscriber market. OQ Technology has three satellites in low Earth orbit and plans to launch seven more this year, says OQ Technology’s chief innovation officer, Prasanna Nagarajan. OQ has paying customers in the oil and gas, agriculture, and transport logistics industries.

Sateliot, based in Barcelona, has the satellite it launched in 2021 in orbit and plans to launch four more this year, says Sateliot’s business development manager, Paula Caudet. The company is inviting early adopters to sample its service for free this year while it builds more coverage. “Certain use cases are fine with flybys every few hours, such as agricultural sensors,” Caudet says.

OQ Technology claims it will launch enough satellites to offer at least hourly coverage by 2024 and near-real-time coverage later that year. Sateliot is also aiming for better-than-hourly coverage sometime in 2024 and near-real-time coverage in 2025. .... ' 

Ascon for Small Device Protection

 Key need, given how many of these is currently remotely connected.

 US NIST adopts Ascon algorithms for small device protection  By David Manners 16th February 2023, For Light Weight Crypto, ElectronicsWeekly

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has chosen Ascon, a group of cryptographic  algorithms, to protect data generated by small devices.

Ascon’s algorithms will be published as NIST’s lightweight cryptography standard later in 2023.

The chosen algorithms are designed to protect information created and transmitted by the IoT, including its myriad tiny sensors and actuators.

They are also designed for other miniature technologies such as implanted medical devices, stress detectors inside roads and bridges, and keyless entry fobs for vehicles. .

“The world is moving toward using small devices for lots of tasks ranging from sensing to identification to machine control, and because these small devices have limited resources, they need security that has a compact implementation,” says NIST scientist Kerry McKay, “these  algorithms should cover most devices that have these sorts of resource constraints.”

To determine the strongest and most efficient lightweight algorithms, NIST held a development program that took several years, first communicating with industry and other organizations to understand their needs and then requesting potential solutions from the world’s cryptography community in 2018.

“We considered a number of criteria to be important,” McKay said. “The ability to provide security was paramount, but we also had to consider factors such as a candidate algorithm’s performance and flexibility in terms of speed, size and energy use. In the end we made a selection that was a good all-around choice.”

Ascon was developed in 2014 by a team of cryptographers from Graz University of Technology, Infineon Technologies, Lamarr Security Research and Radboud University. It was selected in 2019 as the primary choice for lightweight authenticated encryption in the final portfolio of the CAESAR competition, a sign that Ascon had withstood years of examination by cryptographers — a characteristic the NIST team also valued, McKay said.

There are currently seven members of the Ascon family, some or all of which may become part of NIST’s published lightweight cryptography standard. As a family, the variants give a range of functionality that will offer designers options for different tasks. Two of these tasks, McKay said, are among the most important in lightweight cryptography: authenticated encryption with associated data (AEAD) and hashing.

AEAD protects the confidentiality of a message, but it also allows extra information — such as the header of a message, or a device’s IP address — to be included without being encrypted. The algorithm ensures that all of the protected data is authentic and has not changed in transit. AEAD can be used in vehicle-to-vehicle communications, and it also can help prevent counterfeiting of messages exchanged with the radio frequency identification (RFID) tags that often help track packages in warehouses.

Hashing creates a short digital fingerprint of a message that allows a recipient to determine whether the message has changed. In lightweight cryptography, hashing might be used to check whether a software update is appropriate or has downloaded correctly.  ... ' 

Considering Ambient IoT

Good intro and discussion, and in particular thoughts about how this finally implements 'smart' cheaply and with easier integration of sensors and low power requirements.  The latter often comes up, we tested various retail 'in the aisle' power solutions.   A favorite topic.

Ambient IoT Gets Down to Business

By Samuel Greengard, Commissioned by CACM Staff, February 14, 2023

The many aspects of ambient IoT. 

Identified as one of the key enablers of cost-effective technologies that could redefine the way items are tracked, ambient IoT has sustainability implications that could pave the way for a greener supply chain.

Credit: Perle.com

Connecting a vast array of digital and physical objects has long been the idea behind the Internet of Things (IoT). Yet somewhere on the path to progress, things have fallen a bit short. Smart homes still aren't all that smart (they're mostly automated) and smart supply chains and cities remain somewhere over the horizon.

However, after years of hype and promises, the electronic building blocks for a more advanced IoT are finally taking shape. Ambient IoT — a framework for connecting and automating large numbers of objects and devices — is poised to reshape manufacturing, healthcare, food, medicine, and many other fields. Ambient IoT delivers real-time visibility into events as wide-ranging as monitoring food and medicine across a supply chain and thwarting product counterfeiting.

"We're getting to the point where it's finally possible to embed intelligence in almost everything," said Benson Chan, co-founder and senior partner for Strategy of Things, an Oakland, CA, IoT innovation consulting firm. Several factors — including more powerful yet cheap IoT devices, ubiquitous connectivity, and ongoing advances in standards — are fueling these advances.

Sensors Everywhere

The appeal of Ambient IoT is not difficult to fathom, even if the path to progress has so far been bumpy. "This is the original vision for the IoT, which was things interacting with other things," says Chan, who also serves as chair of the U.S. Department of Commerce IoT Advisory Board.  ... '

Setting the Internet of Things Free -- of Batteries

Yes, please.

Setting the Internet of Things Free -- of Batteries

By R. Colin Johnson, Commissioned by CACM Staff, November 8, 2022

EnOcean’s wall-mounted pushbuttons harvest the energy from the finger pushing them to generate an RF signal that turns on lights, overhead fans, or any other device that would ordinarily require connection to electrical wiring.

Energy harvesting reaps energy that would otherwise go to waste—from sources ranging from solar rays to vibrations to ambient gradations in heat, ocean waves/tides, wind, and even the metabolisms of living organisms. These sources can be tuned to produce electricity that is safe, sustainable, and deployable in conditions not suited to the use of batteries.

Incorporating such energy harvesting into the Internet of Things (IoT) extends its reach to nearly any place on the globe—not just those that can access power lines or rechargeable batteries.

"Energy harvesting has the potential to expand the capabilities of the Internet of Things to heights previously unattainable without the technology," said ABI Research analyst Taylor Jensen, who is just putting the finishing touches on a study on energy harvesting for IoT applications.

Applications for IoT devices are expanding dramatically, targeting industries including automotive, aerospace, military, transportation, consumer electronics, industrial, buildings, home appliances, environmental monitoring, home automation, healthcare, and other increasingly "green" sectors. Ubiquitous communication standards such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular technologies have opened the door to IoT devices that monitor and manage widespread networks of sensors and actuators. With the addition of energy harvesting to power off-grid IoT devices, there are few corners of the Earth left that are out of reach.

Energy harvesting has matured through the use of a variety of environmental sources, including:

• Light (via photovoltaic cells).

• Wind (which drives turbines that generate electricity).

• Vibration (resonators drive transducers to generate electricity).

• Thermal (temperature differences converted to electrical energy by dipole oscillators)

• Radio Waves (electricity harvested from oscillating electromagnetic fields with antennas and diodes).

Today, IoT devices often depend on just one of the energy harvesting methods above; for example, solar cells work fine on sunny days, but not so well on cloudy days or at night. To compensate, the solar cells charge a battery during the day, then switch to battery back-up systems to provide power at night.

Yet batteries are not the long-term power solution for the IoT, according to Pat Pannuto, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego.

"Every device with a battery is a device with a lifetime, and a short one at that," said Pannuto. "Today, we already average 10 or more connected devices per person in many parts of the world. Now imagine the transition from today's Internet of Things to tomorrow's Internet of Everything, a future with as many as a trillion connected devices; that is, hundreds of devices per person on the planet. We cannot become a world of battery-tenders; self-sufficient devices are fundamental to scale."

One answer available today has been demonstrated by Ji Li, a senior data and applied science manager at Microsoft. Li says 24/7/365 battery-free always-on IoT devices merely need to include multiple energy harvesters. Rather than using a single-source harvester that stores energy in a battery for times of darkness, no wind, etc., Li has demonstrated a method that combines several energy sources that together can provide the power requirements of an IoT device all day, every day, without the need for batteries.

According to Li, battery-free IoT devices require the use of machine learning (ML) to intelligently switch between multiple energy sources customized to provide the most efficient and most stable power supply for a particular application. For instance, managing the switch among thermal, kinetic, and photovoltaic energy sources with algorithms that compensate for the intermittent nature of each individual energy source allows ML to inform task-scheduler software that automatically switches among power sources.

"Batteries are the limiting factor in the lifetime of today's electronic devices. To extend service lifetime, devices must be able to obtain energy from their deployment context," said Pannuto. "That means scavenging energy from the nearby environment. As we push into more diverse environments, this also means scavenging from new and novel sources. In the future, intelligent instrumented systems will run on energy found wherever they are deployed. For instance, sensors embedded in concrete can harvest from the corrosion of the rebar. Sensors buried underground can harvest from electrogenic bacteria in the soil."  ... ' 

Energy Harvesting from 5G

Requirements to run IOT Systems. 

Energy harvesting: energy-autonomous IoT communication in 5G networks

Press release / November 09, 2022

Minimal vibrations, temperature differences and even light can be used to generate power for small electronic systems. At Booth B4/258 of the electronica 2022 trade show, Fraunhofer researchers will demonstrate how 5G radio modules with higher energy consumption can now be powered autonomously through energy harvesting — without the use of batteries and cables.

A piezoelectric vibration converter supplies energy to sensors used in a building condition monitoring system. © Kurt Fuchs / Fraunhofer IIS

Sensors are key elements of the Internet of Things (IoT). They collect information, for example, about the condition of a machine or an infrastructure, process it and pass it on. The numerous sensors can obtain the required energy from batteries or via a cable connection. Fraunhofer researchers have now found a way to harvest enough energy to operate these sensors using vibrations from machines, equipment or buildings, as well as from temperature differences between pipes, lines or valves, and the environment.

“Powering a sensor node through energy harvesting technology makes it independent from other energy supplies. This saves the cost arising from energy-storage devices, such as a batteries, and eliminates the maintenance effort required for battery replacement. It also makes cable installations redundant,” says Dr. Peter Spies from the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS in Nuremberg, explaining the advantages. The autonomous sensors are used for data collection and transmission, e.g., for the condition monitoring of machines, buildings or bridges, as well as for smart metering systems.

Spies and his team have been researching for some time how and where energy harvesting technologies can be optimized and deployed. Due to the rise in energy prices, their field of research is rapidly gaining relevance, and inquiries from industry are piling up. Their latest development is a so-called NarrowBand IoT module that collects and transmits utility data in a 5G network. To ensure that the modules and sensors can be operated energy independently, they were specially measured and optimized for energy consumption. This opens up new possibilities for autonomously powering not only LPWANs (low-power wide-area networks) but also other radio systems with higher energy consumption and more advanced functionalities, such as bidirectional communication. The systems could then also be operated in a public network.

At the electronica 2022 trade show, held from November 15-18 in Munich, Fraunhofer IIS will be using the NarrowBand IoT module and a mioty® radio sensor to show how these sensors can be operated entirely without cables or batteries using a thermo-electric generator or a vibration converter. Also on display will be a smart screw connection whose preload force can be monitored remotely thanks to energy-autonomous sensor technology. This means that loose screws should no longer pose a safety risk to bridges, machines or buildings in the future.  ... ' 

Sensor System for IoT Devices Integrates Processing, Computing to Save Energy, Protect Data

Smart Sensors that store and processes data.

Sensor System for IoT Devices Integrates Processing, Computing to Save Energy, Protect Data

University of Virginia Engineering

Karen Walker, October 11, 2022

The University of Virginia's Kyusang Lee and colleagues are exploring a field Lee calls the artificial intelligence of things with the development of a smart sensor that stores and processes data. The smart sensor will sit at the edge of a device, which itself sits at the outer reaches of a wireless network. It can detect and process diverse signals that emulate human biology, including imagery for vision; ultrasound for hearing; pressure and strain linked to motion and touch; and virus detection via chemical sensing. Said the University of Virginia’s Kyusang Lee, “I believe our sensor will be especially useful in robotics that rely on combined sensory inputs and real-time integrated processing.”  .... ' 

Stock IOT

 Research 

SES-imagotag Stock is a Pure Play on Retail IoT  in Nanalyze

One of the cool things about an investment research firm like Nanalyze is our longevity. We’ve been around for nearly 20 years now, and so we benefit from being able to draw on more than 2,200 research pieces. In effect, we have a unique dataset across a dozen emerging technology sectors. In that span of time, we’ve seen startups become multi-billion-dollar unicorns, eventually listing as a public company. We’ve watched companies pivot so many times that it makes you dizzy. And we’ve seen others evolve with interesting business models and technologies to match that they eventually create enough traction to merit a second look. Such is the case for a French company called SES-imagotag (SESL.PA), which has emerged to become the global leader in smart and connected digital labels and IoT solutions for physical retail locations.

About SES-imagotag Stock

We first covered this 30-year-old company way, way back in 2014 in which we referred to SES-imagotag as an e-ink pure play for retail stores. E-ink, more commonly referred to as e-paper, is the display technology for e-readers and also electronic shelf labels (ESLs), among other applications. E Ink (8069.TWO) is also the brand name of a Taiwanese company that is actually headquartered in the Boston area, as it was originally founded by some big brains from MIT. E Ink not only provides the ESL technology behind SES-imagotag’s retail IoT platform, it is also one of three principal shareholders in the company.   .... '   (much more) 

Singapore, Germany to Mutually Recognize IoT Cybersecurity Labels

IOT security direction particularly important.     Why 

Singapore, Germany to Mutually Recognize IoT Cybersecurity Labels

By ZDNet,  October 27, 2022

Singapore and Germany have agreed to mutually recognize their respective smart computer product cybersecurity rating labels, with Germany the second European company to do so after Finland.

The pact stipulates that products issued with Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) label would be designated as satisfying Level 2 of the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA)'s cybersecurity labeling system.

CSA's system rates smart devices into four asterisk-demarcated levels, with each asterisk indicating an additional tier of completed testing and assessment; products rated Levels 2 through 4 must meet "enhanced" cybersecurity mandates, including device and data requirements.

The mutual CSA-BSI recognition would apply to consumer Internet of Things devices like smart TVs, smart toys, health trackers, smart lighting, and smart thermostats.

CSA said it would add more product categories under the bilateral agreement in cooperation with BSI.

The mutual recognition will apply to consumer Internet of Things devices including smart televisions, smart toys, health trackers, smart lighting, and smart thermostats.

Full article:   

On Weak IOT Security

 Considerable piece.  IOT has long been a susceptible ecosystems. 

Security in the billions: Toward a multinational strategy to better secure the IoT ecosystem  From AtlanticCouncil

By Patrick Mitchell, Liv Rowley, and Justin Sherman with Nima Agah, Gabrielle Young, and Tianjiu Zuo

Executive summary

The explosion of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and services worldwide has contributed to an explosion in data processing and interconnectivity. Simultaneously, this interconnection and resulting interdependence have amplified a range of cybersecurity risks to individuals’ data, company networks, critical infrastructure, and the internet ecosystem writ large. Governments, companies, and civil society have proposed and implemented a range of IoT cybersecurity initiatives to meet this challenge, ranging from introducing voluntary standards and best practices to mandating the use of cybersecurity certifications and labels. However, issues like fragmentation among and between approaches, complex certification schemes, and placing the burden on buyers have left much to be desired in bolstering IoT cybersecurity. Ugly knock-on effects to states, the private sector, and users bring risks to individual privacy, physical safety, other parts of the internet ecosystem, and broader economic and national security.

In light of this systemic risk, this report offers a multinational strategy to enhance the security of the IoT ecosystem. It provides a framework for a clearer understanding of the IoT security landscape and its needs—one that focuses on the entire IoT product lifecycle, looks to reduce fragmentation between policy approaches, and seeks to better situate technical and process guidance into cybersecurity policy. Principally, it analyzes and uses as case studies the United States, United Kingdom (UK), Australia, and Singapore, due to combinations of their IoT security maturity, overall cybersecurity capacity, and general influence on the global IoT and internet security conversation. It additionally examines three industry verticals, smart homes, networking and telecommunications, and consumer healthcare, which cover different products and serve as a useful proxy for understanding the broader IoT market because of their market size, their consumer reach, and their varying levels of security maturity.  ... '

(Much more ....See also Schneier  on this report, with much additional comment) 

The Challenges of IoT, TLS, and Random Number Generators in the Real World

 Well put piece, technical  .... introduction. 

The Challenges of IoT, TLS, and Random Number Generators in the Real World

Bad random numbers are still with us and are proliferating in modern systems.

By James P. Hughes, Whitfield Diffie

IoT (Internet of things) is now a first-class member of the Internet, communicating with cloud infrastructure. With this come additional requirements to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and authentication for every customer's data. The IETF TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol is used for almost all Internet traffic security, but TLS is not as secure as the general public believes it to be. The current TLS protocol has been proven secure, but do IoT implementations live up to that promise? IoT does not always have the luxury of hardware RNGs (random number generators) or other features typically found on servers, laptops, or even phone processors. The history of RNGs that have not been as random as expected has led to this question.

TLS does not make things easy. It uses fragile constructions such as DSA (Digital Signature Algorithm), RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman), and GCM (Galois/CounterMode), and the protocol itself fails in many ways if the random numbers are not perfectly random. NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) and others have created standards for building, testing, and standardizing RNGs. These standards have been implemented in open-source projects that have made these tools available to the community, but there can be issues with RNGs even when using the standardized open-source libraries. Programmers are not solely to blame.

Many in the cryptographic community scoff at the mistakes made in implementing RNGs. Many cryptographers and members of the IETF resist the call to make TLS more resilient to this class of failures. This article discusses the history, current state, and fragility of the TLS protocol, and it closes with an example of how to improve the protocol. The goal is not to suggest a solution but to start a dialog to make TLS more resilient by proving that the security of TLS without the assumption of perfect random numbers is possible.  ... ') 

P&G and Microsoft Collaborate for Advanced Digital Manufacturing

My former employer goes for advanced digital manufacturing with Microsoft.

P&G and Microsoft co-innovate to build the future of digital manufacturing

Microsoft company logo.  (PRNewsFoto/Microsoft Corp.) (PRNewsfoto/Microsoft Corp.)

NEWS PROVIDED BY  Microsoft Corp.   Vis Cision

Microsoft technology empowers scalability for consumer products leader

CINCINNATI and REDMOND, Wash., June 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On Wednesday, The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE: PG) (P&G) and Microsoft Corp. announced a new multiyear collaboration that will leverage the Microsoft Cloud to help create the future of digital manufacturing at P&G. ... 

A multiyear collaboration that will leverage the Microsoft Cloud to help create the future of digital manufacturing at P&G

The two companies will co-innovate to accelerate and expand P&G's digital manufacturing platform and leverage the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to bring products to consumers faster, increase customer satisfaction and improve productivity to reduce costs. 

"Together with Microsoft, P&G intends to make manufacturing smarter by enabling scalable predictive quality, predictive maintenance, controlled release, touchless operations and manufacturing sustainability optimization — which has not been done at this scale in the manufacturing space to date," said P&G CIO Vittorio Cretella. "At P&G, data and technology are at the heart of our business strategy and are helping create superior consumer experiences. This first-of-its-kind co-innovation agreement will digitize and integrate data to increase quality, efficiency and sustainable use of resources to help deliver those superior experiences."

With Microsoft Azure as the foundation, the new collaboration marks the first time that P&G can digitize and integrate data from more than 100 manufacturing sites around the world and enhance its AI, machine learning and edge computing services for real-time visibility. This will enable P&G employees to analyze production data and leverage artificial intelligence to immediately make decisions that drive improvement and exponential impact. Accessing this level of data, at scale, is rare within the consumer goods industry.

P&G selected Microsoft as its preferred cloud provider to build the future of digital manufacturing based on a four-year history of successfully working together on data and AI. The new collaborative effort will:

Allow for better utilization of data, AI capabilities and digital twins technology.

Optimize manufacturing environmental sustainability efforts.

Increase workforce efficiency and productivity.

"We are excited to help P&G accelerate its digital manufacturing platform using Microsoft Azure, AI and IIoT to accommodate volatility in the consumer products industry with innovative, agile solutions that can easily scale based on market conditions," said Judson Althoff, Microsoft's chief commercial officer. "Our partnership will further P&G's growth and business transformation through digital technology that seamlessly connects people, assets, workflow and business processes that promote resiliency."

Empowering technicians and advancing operations with IIoT

P&G is already innovating and using Azure IoT Hub and IoT Edge to help manufacturing technicians analyze insights with greater speed and efficiency, creating improvements in the production of its baby care and paper products with pilot projects happening in Egypt, India, Japan and the United States.  .... 

Smart Screws

 Interesting application to link manufacturing elements (here screws) with specifications to determine their proper application or condition.    Very useful application it seems. 

Smart Screws Keep Bridges, Machines, Wind Turbines Safe

Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (Germany), May 2, 2022

At Germany's Fraunhofer Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Internet Technologies, researchers developed a self-powered Internet of Things (IoT) device that permits remote monitoring of the stability of screw connections in an object or structure. Smart Screw Connection incorporates sensors and radio technology in a device featuring a screw fitted with a washer containing a piezoresistive DiaForce thin film. The sensors record the preload force at three points when the screw is tightened, and changes in the preload force, which alter the electrical resistance in the thin film, are transmitted via radio module on the screw head to a base station. Fraunhofer's Peter Spies said, "No engineer is required to be on site and check each screw individually, as all the data are transmitted via radio to the service station."  .... '

On IoT Implementation

McKinsey research shows that adoption of IoT technologies has increased exponentially the past five years--but successful implementation still eludes some. Here’s how to get it right they say.  Good thoughtful and useful piece ..... ' 

Another look at IOT and especially Healthcare Vulnerabilities

 Seven key vulnerabilities mentioned.

Medical, IoT Devices Vulnerable to Attack   By Dark Reading, March 11, 2022 

Researchers at Forescout's Vedere Labs cybersecurity intelligence team and CyberMDX cybersecurity service provider discovered seven vulnerabilities, known collectively as "Access:7," in more than 150 Internet of Things (IoT) devices made by more than 100 companies. Three of the bugs, rated critical, allow attackers to gain full control of devices by remotely executing malicious code.

The remainder, rated moderate to high in severity, allow attackers to steal data or execute denial-of-service attacks. The flaws were found in multiple versions of PTC Axeda agent and PTC Desktop Server, which are used in many IoT devices to enable remote access and management.

All versions of the Axeda technology below 6.9.3 are affected. PTC has released patches for the vulnerabilities .... 

In addition to healthcare-related technologies, affected devices include ATMs, SCADA systems, vending machines, cash management systems, IoT gateways, and asset monitoring technologies .... 

From Dark Reading

View Full Article    

Fingerprinting the IOT

Fingerprinting the IoT

Carnegie Mellon University College of Engineering News

Madison Brewer, February 9, 2022

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers strengthened the security of Internet of Things (IoT) devices by making them more resilient against exploitation through their development of radio-frequency fingerprinting (RFF). RFF can be used to identify specific IoT devices by detecting hardware variations that produce unique radio wave signatures. CMU's Jiachen Xu used power amplifiers to foil RFF exploits by changing the IoT signal's features, and a convolutional neural network classified incoming signals as safe or unsafe by assessing the RFF in the processed signal. The researchers also proved Bayesian neural networks could identify and classify RFF quickly and accurately, without requiring excessive computational power.

 Full article

Future of Work Reimagine IoT and Smart Buildings

One of a number of good pieces 

The Future of Work Part 4: Reimagine IoT and Smart Buildings

Greg Dorai  in the CISCO Blog

Part 4 of the 6-part Future of Work Networking Series: Reimagine IoT and Smart Buildings

The Internet of Things (IoT) and Operational Technologies (OT) in Smart Buildings are essential to make hybrid work safer and better for people and better for the planet. The importance of environmental sustainability continues to increase as a growing percentage of consumers rate how “green” organizations are as a factor in whether they want to work for them or buy products from them.

Smart = Sustainable, Simple, and Safe

A key element of environmental sustainability is reducing an organization’s carbon footprint, especially in terms of energy consumption in buildings. Smart buildings can support a more sustainable hybrid work experience on campus by efficiently powering IoT and OT devices with Power over Ethernet (PoE) and continuously adapting building environments by automating management of lights, shades, and HVAC based on changing occupancy, weather, and time of year.

Smart building updates like these can have a significant impact on energy consumption and result in significant operational cost savings. Ideally, these benefits are achieved without creating a separate and independent network for smart building management by converging IoT and OT with the enterprise network in a simple, secure manner that provides end-to-end visibility, monitoring, and management from a single pane of glass. Wi-Fi, Zigbee, and BLE enabled environmental sensors can use the same access points to join the enterprise network yet be segmented from corporate traffic to maintain security policies.

Smart buildings are an important part of the future of hybrid work and driving wireless use cases in the coming years. Operational resources like printers, lights, shades, cameras, screens, HVAC, doors, and vending machines will be integrated through converged IT and OT networks, with a building’s operational technology interconnected and managed by the IT network.

The most compelling part of this approach are the new levels of automation that will make managing buildings be easier while at the same time driving down operational costs. In fact, by tracking people and their real-world work patterns through artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI and ML), the smart building will learn to manage itself.

Instead of just maintaining a temperature range, reimagine the thermostat. You probably already have a smart home thermostat, programmable and monitored from your smart phone. Imagine a building with thousands of these in workspaces, galleries, and conference rooms. They all interact with other sensors to detect the density of people in rooms and adjust the temperature, airflow, shades, and lighting accordingly.

Smart buildings will also simplify our hybrid work experience. The same IoT capabilities that conserve energy can also be used to make work more frictionless. For example, people can get real-time availability of meeting rooms and other office resources and services through Cisco DNA Spaces. A smart system can “know” when a large group of people is going to meet and turn on the HVAC ten minutes earlier to cool down the room to prepare for the incoming crowd. .... ' 

New rechargeable Lithium ION Batteries

Batteries have become everything, in providing IOT, clothing  and beyond.

Engineers Produce 140m Flexible Rechargeable Battery

By MIT News

December 22, 2021

Researchers have developed a rechargeable lithium-ion battery in the form of an ultra-long fiber that could be woven into fabrics. The battery could enable a wide variety of wearable electronic devices, and might even be used to make 3D-printed batteries in virtually any shape.

The researchers envision new possibilities for self-powered communications, sensing, and computational devices that could be worn like ordinary clothing, as well as devices whose batteries could also double as structural parts.

In a proof of concept, the team behind the new battery technology has produced a flexible fiber battery 140 meters long to demonstrate that the material can be manufactured to arbitrarily long lengths. The work is described in "Thermally Drawn Rechargeable Battery Fiber Enables Pervasive Power," published in the journal Materials Today.

The system embeds the lithium and other materials inside the fiber, with a protective outside coating, thus making the version stable and waterproof.

From MIT News

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Tiny ML, less Memory in IOT

 Always interested in the integration of AI and secure IOT.  Smarter, better devices

ACM TECHNEWS

Tiny ML Design Alleviates Bottleneck in Memory Usage on IoT Devices

By MIT News, December 16, 2021

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have come up with a machine learning (ML) method to reduce the amount of memory required for Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

The researchers boosted the efficiency of TinyML software by analyzing memory use on microcontrollers running convolutional neural networks; they applied a new inference technique and neural architecture to address imbalanced memory utilization-induced bottlenecks, reducing peak memory usage four- to eight-fold.

When deployed on the next-generation MCUNetV2 tinyML vision system, the method was more accurate than other ML techniques running on microcontrollers.

"Without [graphics processing units] or any specialized hardware, our technique is so tiny it can run on these small cheap IoT devices and perform real-world applications like these visual wake words, face mask detection, and person detection," said MIT's Song Han. "This opens the door for a brand-new way of doing tiny AI and mobile vision."

From MIT News

Example of Key Health IOT

Have become educated in advanced BP measurement lately which led me to note this IOT example. And the need for it.    Note this is something in progress, as yet not available.

eBP: An Ear-Worn Device for Frequent and Comfortable Blood Pressure Monitoring

By Nam Bui, Nhat Pham, Jessica Jacqueline Barnitz, Zhanan Zou, Phuc Nguyen, Hoang Truong, Taeho Kim, Nicholas Farrow, Anh Nguyen, Jianliang Xiao, Robin Deterding, Thang Dinh, Tam Vu

Communications of the ACM, August 2021, Vol. 64 No. 8, Pages 118-125  10.1145/3470446

Frequent blood pressure monitoring is the key to diagnosis and treatments of many severe diseases. However, the conventional ambulatory methods require patients to carry a blood pressure (BP) monitoring device for 24 h and conduct the measurement every 10–15 min. Despite their extensive usage, wearing the wrist/arm-based BP monitoring device for a long time has a significant impact on users' daily activities. To address the problem, we developed eBP to measure blood pressure (BP) from inside user's ear aiming to minimize the measurement's impact on users' normal activities although maximizing its comfort level.

The key novelty of eBP includes (1) a light-based inflatable pulse sensor which goes inside the ear, (2) a digital air pump with a fine controller, and (3) BP estimation algorithms that eliminate the need of blocking the blood flow inside the ear.

Through the comparative study of 35 subjects, eBP can achieve the average error of 1.8 mmHg for systolic (high-pressure value) and -3.1 mmHg for diastolic (low-pressure value) with the standard deviation error of 7.2 mmHg and 7.9 mmHg, respectively. These results satisfy the FDA's AAMI standard, which requires a mean error of less than 5 mmHg and a standard deviation of less than 8 mmHg.

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1. Introduction

BP provides doctors with insight to initiate their diagnosis. For example, chronic kidney disease, sleep apnea, and adrenal and thyroid disorders can all cause high BP, whereas low BP indicates the possibility of heart or endocrine problems, dehydration, severe infection, or even blood loss. Additionally, uncontrolled elevated BP is a major symptom of many life-threatening diseases, such as hypertension, heart failure or stroke.4 Commonly, the reliable approach to measure BP was done by a health care practitioner using inflatable wrist cuff with a pressure gauge. Since the invention of digital BP devices, nonmedical trained users can self-measure their BP at home, as an acoustic sensor can replace the stethoscope, and a pressure sensor with a DC pump can substitute the pressure gauge and hand pump. However, these devices often cause discomfort and inconvenience for those who need frequent BP monitoring, such as hemodialysis (kidney failure) patients,18 individuals with undiagnosed white coat hypertension or undiagnosed masked hypertension. There is also an increased use of frequent BP monitoring for postoperative organ transplant recipients. In such cases, BP is measured every 30 min for 24 h,9 although each hemodialysis session takes around 4 h. Therefore, there is a significant need for an unobtrusive and comfortable BP monitoring approach. In the case of prolonged dialysis, patients hardly rest because the BP cuff constantly squeezes their arm and often hinders the wearer's mobility. Therefore, by moving the location of measuring BP to inside the ear, our device has a minimal impact in affecting the users' mobility and comfort.

In this paper, we aim to develop a novel wearable system to capture BP inside the ear called eBP, as illustrated in Figure 1. eBP resolves the aforementioned issues with its discreet design, quiet components, and convenient location.  .....'