The Week In Review: IoT

Q&A
Francine Berman, a computer science professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, talks about ethical issues in the Internet of Things in this interview. She says, “First of all, we’re just at the tip of the iceberg in what is arguably going to be a brave new world. And it’s highly heterogeneous: We’ll be seeing a lot more autonomous systems, we’ll be seeing enhanced humans and smart systems, devices, and organizations. When you put all of those together, and you start thinking about how to bring out the best of the Internet of Things rather than the worst of the Internet of Things, governance is really the key.”

Opinion
Some IoT devices, such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, are useful gadgets, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes in this opinion piece. Still, users should be aware that those devices are listening at all hours of the day and night, unless you tell them to stop listening, he notes. Privacy and security issues are what trouble him the most.

Conferences
Health care and the IoT will be the prime topic at the Privacy & Security Forum in San Francisco on Thursday and Friday, May 11-12. Speakers at the Grand Hyatt San Francisco include representatives of the FBI, Kaiser Permanente, and the Carolinas Health System. Unisys, Protiviti, Level 3 Communications, SailPoint Technologies, and Tanium are among the corporate sponsors.

Malware
A new botnet dubbed “BrickerBot” is wreaking havoc among unsecured IoT devices, “bricking” them or rendering them useless by exploiting vulnerabilities, similar to what the Mirai malware does. This article offers advice on protecting yourself and your devices against this and other botnets.

Consortia
The e-Security business of Thales has joined the Industrial Internet Consortium. Thales e-Security will collaborate with industry leaders in developing IIoT security measures, especially in data protection and device security.

Products
The SARA-R410M quad-band LTE Cat M1 module is new from u-blox. The module measures 16 x 26 x 2.5 millimeters.

Market Research
ABI Research analyzed more than 500 companies for their IoT service capabilities and found 59% of organizations were worthy of a high IoT maturity ranking. That figure is almost double what the market research found its first survey of organizational IoT maturity, during September 2015. ABI credited partner program ecosystems for the rise in IoT maturity among enterprises.

Personnel
CRATUS Technology named Brian MacLeod vice president of marketing and business development. He previously was marketing and business development manager for Trimble.