Many pundits have predicted that 2019 is the year of the Internet of Things. And while this has created lots of excitement and subsequent plans for deployment, it also brings with this the need to remember that data protection must remain top of mind. Nary a week goes by when we don’t hear of data breaches targeting the sensitive information of companies’ customers. This stolen data is then used for identity theft, fraud and in many cases the data is sold on the dark web. We’ve witnessed the damage that has been done from bad hombres hacking into cameras, microphones and other smart devices. Thus, we need to remain mindful that as these intelligent devices continue to proliferate, that their security is examined – and constantly reexamined, in order to continually minimize data breaches. The article that follows provides an interesting perspective on using data rights and decentralization techniques to do this.
Without a doubt, Internet of Things devices have already seeped into the day-to-day life of the average individual.
Down to the consumer market, Amazon sold over 10 million of its Echo devices over the holidays, and Google Home is thought to be even more popular.
These just scratch the tip of the iceberg, of course. Home automation has seen an explosion in popularity, with a number of brands delivering intuitive products for cooking, cleaning, security, and lighting (to name a few). A hobby once reserved for the tech-savvy tinkerer, it’s becoming increasingly rare to find a consumer that doesn’t seek to improve their quality of life with the myriad of solutions on the market.
So fast-paced are the advances in this sector that they harken back to a retro-futuristic vision of not only an interconnected home, but interconnected industrial processes that pipe data from a range of sensors to various machines that can deliver insights to businesses, so as to turbocharge their operations.
