INTERNET OF THINGS: A Whole New Level of Hyperconnectivity

Imagine a scenario where your dog sends you an SMS telling you he is taking a walk around the block, your fridge updates your shopping list with the items that have run out on its shelves, your TV refuses to switch on because you have not done your exercise for the day and you get in your car and instead of driving you sit back and let it drive you to your office while it reads you today’s paper.  Reality or fiction?
 

Welcome to the world of the Internet-of-Things (IoT), a concept that envisions a world where ordinary everyday objects are connected and networked to the internet and/or to one another and can freely communicate and upload data with little or no human interaction. The ‘things’ in the IoT in this case can refer to an endless array of objects including household appliances (fridges, microwaves), medical gadgets (pacemakers, heart monitors), wearable devices (Smart watches and glasses), automobile engines, factory machines, and even farm animals, the list is endless. The basic criterion is that if the ‘thing’ can be switched on and off and/or has a sensor embedded in it then it can be part of the IoT. 

The way it works is to have every ‘thing’ (thing here also includes people) issued with an IP address as a unique identifier, giving it autonomy on the internet and limiting or completely removing the human factor in data capturing. With IoT, the internet platform shifts in to a totally new paradigm in its ability to gather, analyze, and distribute data that can then be turned into actionable information.

Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) in a white paper released in 2011 put the number of devices connected to the internet by 2010 at 12.5 billion; the same report predicted that “there will be 25 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2015 and 50 billion by 2020.” Analyst firm Gartner was a bit more conservative putting the number at 26 billion, by 2020. These figures are a great indicator of the high impact that IoT is expected to have in the various aspects of everyday-life for private users as well as for businesses.

For Individual users the impact will be in such areas like health, education and communication. In health, IoT will make remote monitoring of gadgets like heart monitors and pacemakers a possibility as well as enable emergency notifications especially for the terminally ill and the elderly. For businesses, IoT will give the ability to more efficiently monitor and control operations while providing more information and control in order to identify and fix these problems.

Along with the innumerable opportunities and connections created by IoT, come a myriad of challenges the major one being security – hacking, crime and terrorism. With everything being networked to everything else, it makes it very easy for someone who manages to hack into just one device on the network to gain access to your entire network. From there the industrial spy, the stalker, the terrorist, gains free reign and power over the victim. 

It is however important to note that in the case of IoT where the benefits may very well outweigh the challenges, then it is worth taking the risk even as the relevant regulatory bodies embark on finding ways of minimizing the risks and plugging any vulnerabilities.