Smart city revenues skyrocket; core problems remain

A new research report predicts that annual revenues from smart city projects will grow to nearly $89 billion by 2025. However, it found most smart city initiatives are focusing on solving peripheral issues, with few big projects tackling core city problems.

Navigant’s “Smart Cities” report, annual smart city revenue is expected to grow to $88.7 billion worldwide by 2025 from $36.8 billion in 2016.

“During the next two years, the adoption of smart city solutions is expected accelerate as the spread of the Internet of Things provides further momentum,” said the release.

“As city leaders around the world continue to commit to smart city objectives to meet social, economic, and environmental challenges, national governments are also encouraging cities to become centers of innovation and drivers of sustainable growth.”

Revenues driven from five key areas

The report examined growth of the smart market with a focus on five key industries that include government, buildings, energy, mobility and water. The study complied profiles of high profile smart city projects in regions throughout the world, comparing different smart city approaches.

The report found that smart city strategies are focusing increasingly on climate adaption and resilience. As well, they were putting more resources into improving the cities’ relevance to its citizens in their daily lives.

However, the report found that despite a proliferation of pilot programs and grand visions for the future, there were few ambitious smart city projects actively addressing the big issues in urban environments around the world. Specifically, the report identified a dearth of financially sound, large-scale smart projects that are attempting to solve core city issues that are holding back the evolution of future cities and how we live in them.

“Today, city leaders and suppliers are recognizing that there needs to be a more clear and timely route to the broader deployment of proven technologies and solutions,” said Navigant research director Eric Woods. “The question is how to establish the right business models and deployment strategies to enable this expansion.”

Source: Readwrite

The IoT Gets a Model (and Perhaps the Needed Catalyst for Market Growth)

With little fanfare, the first Internet of Things (IoT) model I am aware of has been published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the folks who set the standards for smart grid interoperability in recent years. This new model is an important step in defining exactly what the IoT is and outlining the necessary security standards that go along with it. Could this be the catalyst needed to help drive the emerging IoT market? It sure doesn’t hurt.

Up until now, there has been a vacuum of standards and uncertainty around the buzzy IoT. The new model, called Network of Things (NoT), was created by Jeff Voas, a NIST computer scientist, and was announced in late July. Voas based the model on a traditional idea of distributed computing. It should be noted that the model uses two acronyms—IoT and NoT—extensively and interchangeably, and the relationship between the two is subtle, according to the published document.

The NoT model features four fundamental elements: sensing, computing, communication, and actuation. The model goes on to describe five primitives, or building blocks, which are:

• Sensor: An electronic utility that measures physical properties such as temperature, acceleration, weight, sound, location, presence, identity, etc.
• Aggregator: A software implementation based on a mathematical function(s) that transforms groups of raw data into intermediate, aggregated data.
• Communication Channel: A medium by which data is transmitted (e.g., physical via USB, wireless, wired, verbal, etc.).
• External Utility (eUtility): A software or hardware product or service. The current definition of an eUtility is deliberately broad to allow for unforeseen future services and products that will be incorporated in future types of NoTs yet to be defined.
• Decision trigger: A trigger that creates the final result(s) needed to satisfy the purpose, specification, and requirements of a specific NoT.

The model describes more technical aspects of the IoT/NoT, and anyone who is working on the engineering end of this trend should study the details. To the less technical, the model might appear too abstract. Nonetheless, having some basic building blocks delineated does everyone a service by establishing standards that can be employed, particularly for security and interoperability reasons.

NoT Model Primitives

(Source: National Institute of Standards and Technology)

The NIST model is a strong first step in creating an easy-to-grasp IoT framework. It might appear simple at first to some, but it also has a certain elegance in that simplicity. Given its lack of complexity or specificity, it is more likely to gain wider acceptance for further development by stakeholders, since it sets a relatively clean starting point on which to iterate as the technologies and market mature. In fact, Voas encourages others to build upon his foundational model, even as he and his colleagues continue to explore reliability and security issues going forward. 

Source: navigant research blog

The Bluetooth Low Energy Invasion

As its name implies, Bluetooth Low Energy (also known as Bluetooth Smart or Bluetooth 4) technology, was designed from its inception to be power-efficient.

Besides having “Bluetooth” in the name, the BLE protocol is technically different than previous Bluetooth versions, utilizing additional usage scenarios (and thus risks). Focus has been put on simplicity rather than throughput, thus making the chip not only less energy hungry, but also significantly smaller and cheaper. And this key characteristic turned out to be the catalyst for the explosion of a wide assortment of new “IoT” devices and applications on the market.

The availability, low cost and ease of implementation has rendered the technology extremely popular among startups, but as IoT World News redactors already noticed BLE is also making its way into medical, industrial and government equipment.

It is forecasted that more and more BLE devices will surround our lives in the form of wearables, sensors, lightbulbs, socks, cups, medical devices, and other smart-products. Many of these connected devices are not associated with any significant risk, but some may possess serious security implications (i.e. door locks, alarms, security sensors, biometric authentication, banking tokens, keypasses etc.). Also many devices expose users to potential privacy vulnerabilities.

What about security?

According to specification, Bluetooth Low Energy “provides several features to cover the encryption, trust, data integrity and privacy of the user’s data”. In particular, to encrypt transmission, BLE devices may undergo a pairing procedure.

Surprisingly however, most devices do not implement the above-mentioned security features. For many devices’ usage scenarios (e.g. public cash registers, devices with remote sharing feature, managing thousands of beacons) it is not possible to carry out the pairing procedure in a secure environment.

Some vendors do not associate any significant risk with the possibility of intercepting the transmission, and so they accept it. Others struggle to comply with various requirements: usability, multiple users or devices, cloud backup etc. With Bluetooth Smart pairing involved it is not easy to share access or to transfer it to another device. Thus many vendors have decided to create their own security mechanisms on top of the unencrypted Bluetooth LE link.

Possible attacks

Unfortunately, entrusting security mechanisms to software developers requires caution, as confirmed by the vast amount of publicly known vulnerabilities in various software components. With significant hardware limitations, raised business expectations and tight schedules, the probability of disaster is greater than expected.

The BLE devices research conducted by the author disclosed security flaws in most of the tested devices. In effect, attacks can result among other things in:

• disrupting functionality – e.g. you cannot control a smart home, open a smart lock, or use a smart Point-of-Sale device
• spoofing (false indications, disabling alarms)
• data interception of e.g. personal information, authentication etc.
• taking control over the device (e.g. opening a smart lock, turning a smart home)

As the Bluetooth operating range is limited, an attacker needs to be close to the victim. However some scenarios may abuse proximity features, like an automatic door opening on arrival, or using remote link to the user’s smartphone away from original location (e.g. in public transport). And many attacks can be performed inconspicuously using a mobile phone or a tiny (beacon-sized) device.

Related articles

• Code Blue: “Bluetooth is ubiquitous”
• Panasonic: “Bluetooth is not just the audio connection”
• How the UK health service is pioneering mHealth

The risk associated with the attack is not always obvious. For example, the current pulse indication from a smart wristband of a regular person presumably will not be of interest for passers-by. The situation may change dramatically if the person is a highly ranked official, and an adversary would like to know their pulse during important negotiations. Or – the wristband pulse indication is used as a biometric authentication in a banking application.

For further information:

• See GATTack.io
• BLE’s success lies in the IoT, not retail, claims new report

Source: Iot world news

Intel introduces Joule IoT development kit

At last week’s Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich introduced the Intel Joule compute module, a high-performance developer platform with support for Intel RealSense depth-sensing cameras, targeted at IoT developers, entrepreneurs and established enterprises.
 
Several Intel customers and partners demonstrated potential applications of the technology, including Microsoft, Canonical and French company PivotHead, which has created augmented reality safety glasses for manufacturing environments.
 
The Joule platform enables people to prototype a concept rapidly and then take it into production in a fraction of the time and development cost. Joule is a system-on-module (SoM) in a low-power package making it suitable for computer vision, robotics, drones, industrial IoT, VR, AR, micro-servers and other applications that require high-end edge computing.
 
The Joule module is available in two models – 570x and 550x. The 570x developer kit was available for sale at the conference and will begin shipping next month through Intel reseller partners.
 
Also at the forum, senior Intel executives mapped out the company’s autonomous driving vision. The session outlined the business opportunity, headlined Intel’s end-to-end technology assets and nodded to its investment strategy.
 
Intel covered how it is positioned to deliver the broadest set of assets for autonomous driving, powering the intelligence behind the things, network and the cloud. The morning kicked off with Doug Davis, senior vice president and general manager of the IoT group. Subsequent sessions were led by: Diane Bryant, executive vice president and general manager of the data centre group, who connected the dots between things and the data centre, including machine and deep learning; Asha Keddy, vice president of the client and IoT businesses and systems architecture group, who summarised network needs and the evolution of 5G; and Doug Fisher, senior vice president and general manager of the software and services group, who rounded out the morning discussing the software-enabled autonomous driving future.

Source:M2M Zone

Smart city and Smart Living.The role of Telco Operators

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Open-System Standards Are Making the IoT a Reality

The IoT continues to be at the forefront of the electronics industry’s collective imagination. With predictions of billions of devices involved in every aspect of our lives by 2020, there is clearly promise and opportunity. However, the industry may need to turn the dial back a few notches, since opportunity does not equal readiness. IoT devices will simply require “more” moving forward: They will need more performance, more capability, more memory, more connectivity, more sensors, more security, etc., but with “less”— lower power consumption, lower cost and smaller packages. This is where open-system standards and organizations like the IPSO Alliance come into play, and where they can have the most impact. Open standards and the organizations participating in such efforts work to develop the ideas that will allow the IoT to become a reality; they are able to contribute their collective knowledge to “make it work.” Further, open-system standards offer the only way to achieve the economies of scale required to make the IoT financially possible.

There are numerous open-standards organizations actively engaged in supporting the development of the IoT. Some focus on developing the software to link the IoT, others on enabling interoperability, cloud scalability, etc. For example, the IPSO Alliance historically worked to promote the use of Internet protocol for IoT devices; with that work complete, it has evolved to focus on issues related to device identity and privacy. Important too are formal standards organizations that look to develop and formalize the standards they feel are most needed to ensure the IoT’s success.

So once the open-system standards are defined, will the IoT be full steam ahead? The reality is that open-system standards organizations establish the goals and targets, and identify and develop the path forward, but it will always fall to commercial organizations to productize this work and make the IoT come to fruition. For example, certain verticals—such as medical and some industrial applications—need additional proof of quality, which is outside the scope of open-systems standards. It is here that the handoff is made to commercial entities to develop proprietary solutions based on the work of standards organizations, but that meet end-customer requirements for documentation and support.

Is the IoT a reality? It is: Some systems use the ideas already. However, we’re only partway there, as the IoT is not even close to being ubiquitous. The fact is that it will take time—and new technology—to achieve its potential. Open-system standards organizations are critical to identify the requirements and develop the approaches that will allow the IoT to truly come into its own.

Source:IPSOAlliance