Internet of Things: The Next Stage of Social Development
Imagine that you suddenly woke up and it’s autumn of 1916. What type of world would you witness around you? Can you just close your eyes, take a moment and imagine?
Exactly a century ago, telecommunications were in their infancy and still regarded as something from the world of semi-science fiction. Most wide-spread transport means were via railroad and maritime vessels, accountants and bankers carefully kept their records exclusively on paper and the world as a whole still seemed to be immense in size. There were of course ways of transferring the information through relatively fast avenues like telegraph: a message from Europe could be delivered to North America for only 15 minutes with the means of Trans-Atlantic Cable, but this is something that only the selected few can afford.
Who would ever dare to imagine that a hundred years later we will be sending control commands to a robotic rover, that operates on the surface of another planet, taking us same 15 minutes to do it? 15 minutes to get the signal inside the masterpiece of human engineering and artificial intelligence over the distance of 55 million kilometers. It is hard to picture such distance even today in 21st century, but, nonetheless, it is actually happening.
This small example of technical progress makes us think about the future and how it will look like. During last 100 years’ humanity managed to increase the speed of communication exponentially and it seems like this is directly linked to the overall pace of scientific growth.
Recently we started to hear the term “Internet of Things” more often. Some say that this is a phenomenon that will take humanity to the next level of development. At the same time, some have never even heard about it. And this is typical for the brand new concepts. Coming back to the “100 years ago” example, it would be fair to mention that a telephone wasn’t even taken seriously by many people at the very beginning. Some even were making jokes about “how it would look like if a gentlemen and a lady would keep entertaining themselves with wireless telephone boxes instead of enjoying company of each other while walking in the park”. Sounds hilarious, right?
So what is Internet of things? In 2013 the Global Standards Initiative on Internet of Things (IoT-GSI) defined the IoT as “the infrastructure of the information society.”
As you probably know, there are several distinguished stages of the societal world development: feudal society, which was dominant model in Middle Age, was replaced by the Industrial Society after the Industrial Revolution back in 18th century. Later on, in 20th century the the model got a significant push by overall technical progress, and eventually with the emergence on Informational and Communication Technologies we are now in transition period that is leading us into Post-Industrial Era – a stage of society that is very often called “Information Society”.
The infrastructure of this society will be created by the next generation technologies, that will be connected between each other by the means of Global Network of Internet. And this infrastructure will be there to change the ways of mass-production and global trade forever. Have a look at this short infographic video to understand how it already starts to work:
However, there are some challenges that are coming along this “Informational Revolution”, one of the biggest being data security and safety of communication. Nothing new under the sun, as they say: when the first commercial airlines were launched there was much concern on flight safety (which are still there, even though commercial aviation will soon celebrate 100 years anniversary).
Andrew and Ken Munro of Pen Test Partners (a UK-based IT security company) created a first virus targeted to hit one of the essential parts of any SMART-home technology: internal temperature control system. They later admitted that the malware was specially designed to demonstrate the weak points of the IoT concept. Results of their experiment were demonstrated in August during the Def Con IT conference.
For the experiment, they used one of the most popular models of the thermostat. Tierney and Munro discovered vulnerabilities on the device by means of which they have managed to remotely install malicious software. The hacked thermostat began to change the room temperature from minimum to maximum, and then display the request to transfer money to the account of intruders. Tierney and Munro said that they are planning to transfer all the information about the vulnerabilities they found to the manufacturer of the thermostat.
Internet of Things is shaping today and this process is irreversible. But it brings to the top of the list the data and connectivity security issues. Manufacturers should never underestimate these issues and pay maximum attention to the possible weak points of their products. It may be reached through careful and comprehensive QC/QA procedures.
Falcon Technologies International have never underestimated data security, and this is one of the basic values we put at the core of every single product we develop. Once the data is recorded on Century Archival disc, it is safe for centuries, and we give a 100% guarantee for that.