The recently wrapped up IoT Evolution Expo was a who’s who of IoT industry luminaries, and not just in the keynote hall where attendees got inspirational messages from Coach Joe Gibbs and actionable advice from AT&T, Cisco, Eurotech, Intel, Oracle, Sikorsky and Spireon. The sessions were loaded with gritty hands-on tutorials and strategy sessions from all over the industry.
We thought we’d bring you some of the insights you might have missed, in the faculty members’ own words. Read on for what the speakers had to say about their own talks.
Kevin W. Mullins
Chief Executive Officer
SaferMobility
Disaster Mitigation: Communication and Situational Awareness
When disasters strike, both pre- and post-event information sharing is critical to the best outcomes and personal safety. Technology exists which incorporate proprietary system platforms to connect smart device technology with a dynamic, end-to-end safety and information sharing solution. These systems allow users download an integrated application giving each the ability to stream live encrypted video, GPS location, and other information, while at the same time carry on full and direct conversations with first responders. If an emergency, safety, security or assistance issue arises, the individual touches the app on their smart device and systems are immediately activated for a quick and professional response. This information can be sent immediately to police, fire, EMS, or other responders in the field – live in real-time.
In addition to the submission of information, these technologies provide a dynamic Emergency Notification System. Systems allow for a blast of vital information to users via SMS, email, and through the application. Integrations further allow for external databases, such as weather, seismic, or fire, incorporations to provide the most essential and up-to-date information.
Matt Ramsay
VP Business Development
Accelerated
Core of Securing IOT networks
A discussion on security and the network as it relates to IOT. Accelerated considers the problem of how IOT has evolved with the notion that “the perimeter is dead.” We discuss briefly this evolution and draw parallels to metadata. Does the very nature of all these interconnected devices give rise to a metadata problem where the actual content is less powerful than the knowledge of the connection? We talk about the core challenges being: (a) the connectivity and especially the emergence of cellular connectivity; and (b) that securing IOT is not only about making the devices “smart” and bringing security to the edge but making sure they are “smartly” connected.
John Greenough
Research Analyst
BI Intelligence
The Ultimate Gateway: The Battle for Your Home
Consumers are excited and ready for their homes’ devices to be connected to the internet. However, the smart home market is currently at the chasm of the traditional tech adoption curve, in which smart home providers are struggling to move from the early adopter phase to the mass-market phase. We discuss the barriers they see preventing mass-market smart home adoption and address how smart home providers should position themselves at this crucial point in the market’s development.
Jeff Clemow
Director, North America Channel Sales
Telit
Managing Multiple Networks/Carriers
Not all Network Providers are created equal, so when selecting a network to connect your edge devices to the IoT or Enterprise you need to consider more than the cost of a MB or the color of a coverage map. Failure to select the right type of provider can have potentially catastrophic results on your deployment. It’s critical to work with a company that has years of dedicated IoT experience, has secure infrastructure and can provide you with the necessary tools to identify problematic connections and resolve them remotely
Doron Sherman
VP Business Development
PubNub
Multidimensional Scalability using Fog Computing
Fog computing is an emerging architectural blueprint for IoT implementations on which diverse use cases can be deployed. The promise of fog computing is to harness the manageability and economics of centralized cloud computing with the flexibility of decentralized edge computing. Not surprisingly, this compelling merger of disparate implementation paradigms poses a number of critical challenges, first and foremost of which is scalability. This session tackles the multiple dimensions in which scalability challenges are manifested within the context of fog computing.
The constantly-decreasing cost of compute, storage and network resources drives mass innovation at an unprecedented pace. A leading analyst firm recently estimated that within the next couple of years, half of all IoT solutions will be created by new companies less than 3 years old. These new apps will be deployed on top of a fog computing infrastructure alongside enterprise-class and mission-critical apps. The immediate challenge emenating from this scenario is the need to deploy apps with vastly-different scale and quality-of-service (QoS) requirements.
For fog computing to successfully tackle the above requirements, there is a need to properly address the development, delivery and operational needs, allowing contributions from a myriad of hardware and software vendors. Concepts such as loose-coupling, real-time communication, data streaming and semantic interoperability will be discussed to address the wave of innovation fog computing is slated to facilitate in the IoT space.
Robert Rubin
CEO
Skypatrol
A Tangled Web: Insurance, Buy Here/Pay Here and Government Regulation
Sometimes the most successful products were invented for something else. PlayDoh started as wallpaper cleaner, Glide Floss was developed as thread for space suits and Coca Cola was a medicine for morphine addiction. The use of GPS in vehicles once was exclusively for safety (OnStar) and for the purpose of locating and recovering assets if the sub-prime borrower failed to make their car payment. Sub-prime vehicle financing and Buy Here Pay Here auto sales would not be the viable business they are without GPS technology. More than just locate vehicles when borrowers have skipped – leading GPS Tracking device vendors offer a complete suite of software solutions that remind customers of monthly loan payments, help dealers assess risk and are relationship building tools for the dealer. Now, this same technology is being used as the backbone of UBI, or Usage Based Insurance. Also called Pay as You Drive, the cost to the consumer is dependent upon type of vehicle used, measured against time, distance, behavior and place. Linking insurance premiums more closely to actual individual vehicle or fleet performance allows insurers to more accurately and fairly price premiums. It also gives consumers the ability to control their premium costs by incenting them to reduce miles driven and adopt safer driving habits. But, how much data is being collected? How is it being used and shared? And, can it be used against you? Not everybody agrees what data should be utilized by insurance companies to calculate risk – and therefore consumer costs. What role does government have in regulating these very gray areas? Is this the end to unfair practices such as redlining and basing insurance prices on credit ratings? Will UBI used the same way?
Bob Zeidman
President
Zeidman Technologies
Sensors
IoT devices essentially consist of sensors, outputs, and communications. All of these things need to be coordinated by a controller in a way to avoid things like deadlocks, race conditions, and CPU starvation. Most IoT devices need to be low-cost and low-power, but a sophisticated controller typically requires either custom hardware and software or a real-time operating system, which in turn requires a complex, expensive, power-hungry microcontroller and lots of memory. Either way, you need programmers with a high degree of expertise.
Dick Scott
President
Ontegrity, Inc
Disaster Recovery
Most businesses cannot afford to be vulnerable to power failures, and power must be restored quickly when a disaster or outage occurs. As such, intelligent site management has never been more vital. Leveraging remote monitoring and predictive analytics data enables organizations to improve site resiliency, maximize up-time, while decreasing maintenance costs. Scott cites real-world examples and address the new era of enhanced site management based on big data and predictive analytics.
Lessons in Building Automation
With pressure on businesses to maintain up-time 24/7, facilities must operate more efficiently than ever before to deliver products and services without interruption. Preventive maintenance is key to equipment performance and longevity. Leveraging remote monitoring and predictive analytics to collect and analyze big data enables organizations to diagnose issues, reduce emergency maintenance costs, and keep equipment and systems running to maximize up-time and improve business continuity.
David Benjamin
CEO
Locus Traxx Worldwide
Supply Chain Logistics: Realities of Worldwide Delivery
From Farm to Fork, the IoT will play a role in maintaining freshness, safety and the strong viability of this critical industry. David will focus on real-time monitoring of the transportation cycle and the impact of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) and how the IoT will solve the impact of the new Sanitary Transportation Regulations. Hear how innovative wireless tracking provides actionable data to improve safety and the bottom-line of logistics operations worldwide. Follow along with real world, real-time examples and learn from industry experts on how this “Big Data” play is delivering insight and value to the global market.
Subhash Chowdary
Founder & CEO
Aankhen Inc.
Fog Computing Reality Check: Real World Applications and Architectures
IoT technologies and computing architectures can be confusing as they keep evolving and changing with innovation and shifting paradigms. The session ‘Fog Computing Reality Check’: Real World Applications and Architectures takes you behind the buzzwords to real world applications and architectures in Agriculture/Food Chain, Homeland Security & eCommerce. Is IoT doing any good or creating more harm? Does IoT benefit only advanced countries? How can IoT be deployed despite the challenges of limited internet, power or computers in emerging markets IoT? How do these solutions benefit us? What does IoT do to deliver our favorite foods from all over the world all year long regardless of seasons?
IoT logistics applications are unlocking value in areas not addressed before. With global eCommerce your ‘likes’ are being delivered to your door in hours. As the velocity and volume of goods moving across borders increases so do concerns of homeland security. Security and integrity of the goods from origin to destination are being addressed by IoT based visibility and digital supply chains. How are the ‘things’ used in IoT secured? This session will provide answers to how Cloud, Fog & Device computing is really being deployed.
Kenneth Lowe
Business Development and Sales
Gemalto M2M Cloud (SensorLogic)
Protecting and Defending the Edge
Fear of hacks has never been higher, especially in the growing IoT. With strong incentives to attack, vulnerable networks and unattended devices, there is a risk for hardware attacks and remote software attacks. Smart cities, smart homes and connected cars are at a high-risk for attack because of their increasing popularity and reach. Hardware tamper resistance can alleviate this risk and secure elements can protect the IoT edge device, e.g. car access, smart grid gateway, etc. Gemalto is already providing solutions to help protect connected cars and the smart grids and providing risk assessment and security consulting for a variety of solutions.
When devising a security strategy, it’s crucial to work with longstanding industry experts. Our knowledge of the automotive industry, smart grids with risk assessment and security consulting for a variety of vertical market solutions as well as being the worldwide leader in digital security enables Gemalto to deliver a unique breadth of expertise and best practices. Risks must be evaluated at the inception stage of the development with security solutions built-in from the beginning. Our security experts can perform state-of-the-art physical attacks such as side channel, perturbation, fault attack, environmental testing regarding temperature, frequency and voltage. Our laboratory can also perform software and networks attacks such as pentesting, masscan, static analysis of code, code review. We can also perform combined attacks (physical & logical), especially on embedded hardware and software; such an approach is in line with current automotive industry requirements. A good IoT solution will provide a dedicated management interface with a view of all devices restricting access to authorized users in a private or virtually private environment separate from the Internet. Ongoing consulting on the infrastructure can also help reduce risks.
Edited by
Ken Briodagh
