Internet of Things (IoT), is a network of devices, appliances, vehicles and others that are embedded with sensors, electronics, software and connectivity; enabling them to connect and exchange data. This definition exhibits the endless possibilities that could be achieved with IoT (Elly,2018).
While the importance of IoT in the IT-market is rising, the full potential still has to be fulfilled. Businesses can deploy sensors as part of IoT devices to produce data that can be stored and analyzed. While adding “smarts” to products can give consumers the ability to interact with as well as control appliances and other household products (Koegler,2018).
In a smart home various electric appliances are wired up to a central software control system such as a smartphone app so they can remotely be switched on and off at certain times or if certain events happen. For example, heating can be set to turn on automatically at 6:00 AM in the winter (Woodford,2018).
Unfortunately, there also drawbacks:
- There are a lot of IoT-devices that are vulnerable to hacking. In 2015 for example, Fiat Chrysler recalled 1.4 million vehicles when security researchers found ways to break into smart cars’ systems remotely and control these vehicles.
- The Norwegian Consumer Council recently found that a children’s doll recorded anything said to it by children and sent those recordings to a US company. The company reserved the right to share and use the data.
Fortunately, the GDPR and the ePrivacy Regulation can play a huge role in cases like these whereby organizations can get very high fines if they do not comply to these consumer data regulations (Manwaring,2017).
In conclusion, IoT has huge potential, however, consumers have to be careful in the use of these IoT-products and close examination of consumer protection relating to IoT devices should be at the forefront of the manufacturers of IoT-products.
Feel free to share your opinion in the comment section!
List of sources:
Elly, S. (2018) 7 Ways the IoT Can Change the Business World. IoT Evolution, [online]. Available at: https://www.iotevolutionworld.com/smart-home/articles/437712-7-ways-iot-change-business-world.htm [Accessed online 16 Sep. 2018].
Woodford, C. (2018). Smart Homes and the Internet of Things. Explain that Stuff, [online]. Available at: https://www.explainthatstuff.com/smart-home-automation.html [Accessed online 16 Sep. 2018].
Manwaring, K. (2017). From spying to hacking: Expert lists the dangers of IoT. Daily Mail Online, [online]. Available at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4590176/From-spying-hacking-Expert-lists-dangers-IoT.html [Accessed online 16 Sep. 2018].
Koegler, S. (2018). 5 ways the Internet of Things will change your business. AT&T Business, [online]. Available at: https://www.business.att.com/learn/operational-effectiveness/5-ways-the-internet-of-things-will-change-your-business.html [Accessed online 16 Sep. 2018].
As an old saying goes, “The same knife cuts bread and fingers.” Technology brings convenience to our daily life and makes the impossible possilbe. However, it also causes problems which might be new to people. Thanks for sharing your view and come up with the drawbacks of IoT technology that are important but might be ignored. Two big issuses about IoT mentioned in your post are information security and privacy. Besides these, I would like to mention something that is related to the society. With tasks being automated, the demand for labor will probably decrease and therefore leads to a significant change in labor market. I’m not sure whether the change is an advantage or a disadvantage of IoT, but I’m sure that everyone has to notice and even be prepared.
Hi Mohammad,
I enjoyed reading your analysis on the potential & drawbacks of IoT. I was wondering what your analysis is with regards to security and privacy using different IoT networks, security protocols or VPN & APN more mobile connectivity.
Also, I was wondering what your opinion is on other drawbacks that are currently limiting the technology and its application beyond security and privacy. Many industry experts point to battery life being the main limiting factor of the technological development of IoT devices. Other factors are chip size (eg GPS, Bluetooth), and computing power of microprocessors. Many contemporary B2C IoT application are not as qualitative as B2B applications, that applies to hardware, connectivity as well as your security & privacy concerns.
Dear Mohammad,
Thank you for sharing these interesting articles and your opinion on the IoT matter. I myself have been quite intrigued for a while by the IoT phenomon and I have also done quite some research on it. I agree with the potential drawbacks which you have mentioned and in interestingly enough, in an interview with the CEO of Smart Home at Deutsche Telecom T-Mobile (Germany), for a research which I was conducting, we also discussed the vulnerability of data collected by these IoT applications.
As you could imagine, obtaining customer’ smart product data is paired with privacy concerns for firms. In my opinion firms should be transparent towards their customer by protecting their data but also by letting them know what their data is used for, for example that it is anonimized and only being used for innovation purposes. In this case, IoT data is being used for the New Product Development process. The CEO of T-Mobile’s Smart Home Project mentioned that in the first place it is important that there is a clear law-structure about collecting data for this idea to succeed. He stated that with the GDPR, the first steps in the good direction has already been made. Next, to it, devices need to process data and collect it to central servers. Advanced data analytics can be used to analyze that data in order to improve products, provide content suggestions, doing predictive actions.
So all in all, I agree that there must come more law structures like GDPR for the protection of data because only then the customers will truly and freely engage with their IoT appliances withouth hesitation and worries. This in turn, will benefit the IoT industry due to the pool of data which will generated that can be used for many commercial purposed like innovation processes.
I am interested in the topic of IOT. Other than IOT used in our daily life such as home applications mentioned in this post, there is another important part of IOT which calls IIOT (Industrial Internet of Things). It is used in the industry to improve the reliability and efficiency of production and operation. For example, in a factory with a lot of key equipment, IIOT is able to reflect the real-time situation of these facilities with high precision and thus operators can take proactive measures to avoid serious accident. Another example may be in the warehouse, the amount and location of different goods can be reported automatically and real-time because of internet of which improves the work efficiency of warehouse managers.
Just like the drawbacks of IOT in daily life mentioned in the post which include being vulnerable to hacking and privacy, there are also some concerns with IIOT. On one hand, the amount of data collected by sensors in factory are huge, which needs higher requirement for data storage and data transfer. On the other hand, there is a lot of worthless and unrelated data in the data pool collected by sensors in the factory, which may bring more challenge to data analysis and even interfere the analysis result.
Hey Mohammad,
Nice simple overview of the applications of IoT. I myself am very interested about the implications of IoT, while worrying a lot about the privacy party.
As u stated many IoT devices are vulnerable to hacking, like a large amount of electronic devices. As of their current use, there are even some IoT devices that are always on, while other connect to some kind of electronic device that u always carry, like a smartwatch.
Imagine how much data hackers could steal if there would a breach. In 2017, Senrio, an internet security firm, announced the discovery of a common flaw in many IoT devices, known as “Devil’s Ivy”.
Using this bug, Senrio designed an attack that would gain access to a secure network through a single vulnerable device. A software patch was quickly issued to fix the bug, but it is still affecting millions of devices that have outdated firmware.
It is unimaginable that a single vulnerable device would have such a incredible scope. Would a cooperation between firms and institutes help, by some kind of regulation like u mentioned?
Another problem is that consumers often complain about security issues, but often tend to forget simple things like updating their software, leaving these vulnerable gaps for hackers.
How do you feel about it. Should regulations be better or should there be an active campaign by the firm and government to activate the consumer to take more responsibility, where they can?
I would love to hear your thoughts about this,
Mike