IoT dominates Embedded World
1 min read
Another year, another Embedded World and, like previous years, one theme dominated.
A couple of years back, you couldn't move for announcements featuring an Atom processor. Last year seemed to be all about cloud computing. This year, it was the Internet of Things; a phrase whose ubiquity reduced some journalists to states of despair.
Hidden beneath many layers of marketing hype, the IoT has a number of serious issues which need to be addressed. Perhaps top of the list is security. Much of the discussion has focused on the security of personal data, but most 'things' won't be dealing with people, they'll be parts of systems - and there are many people with a perverse interest in bringing systems down.
If there are going to be 50billion interconnected devices in the next few years - many of which will only talk to each other - then security is paramount. How do we ensure that 'things' are talking to the correct 'things'? How do we ensure the 'thing' talking to another 'thing' is actually the 'thing' it purports to be and that the data it generates is valid?
The issues need to be solved quickly because if the IoT spawns as quickly as marketeers continue to forecast, the genie will be out of the bottle and, as we know, once out, it won't go back in.
