The Week in Review: IoT

Cybersecurity
Arm this week introduced the Cortex-M35P processor with anti-tampering technology and software isolation. The company also debuted security intellectual property to protect Internet of Things devices from physical cyberattacks and close proximity side-channel attacks. Paul Williamson, Arm’s vice president and general manager of the IoT Device IP line of business, provides more details in this blog post.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Science & Technology Directorate announced that Atlanta-based Ionic Security was the first company to successfully complete prototype testing and graduate to the pilot deployment phase of the department’s Silicon Valley Innovation Program. Ionic used its Data Trust Platform to test a secure data transfer plug-in for video surveillance systems. Meanwhile, the DHS S&T is teaming with the Transportation Security Administration to solicit entries to enhance security screening under the SVIP’s Object Recognition and Adaptive Algorithms Passenger Property Screening project. DHS/TSA will accept and evaluate applications up to April 17, 2019.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology brought out version 1.1 of its Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure, which can be read here. This updates version 1.0, which was released in February 2014.

The Food and Drug Administration released its Medical Device Safety Action Plan: Protecting Patients, Promoting Public Health. It is available here. The FDA is looking to establish a medical device patient safety net in the U.S., encourage innovation for safer medical devices, and boost medical device cybersecurity, among other goals.

Finance
Google kicked off an investment program for early-stage startups using the Google Assistant technology. The program will offer financial resources, early access to Google features and tools, Google Cloud Platform access, and promotional support. Four startups are the first recipients of investments: GoMoment, Edwin, BotSociety, and Pulse Labs. Startups can apply to the program here. This program is separate from GV, Alphabet’s venture capital investment arm, formerly known as Google Ventures.

San Francisco-based iBeat reports raising another $5.5 million in seed funding, bringing its total seed funding to $10 million. New investors Kairos, 8VC, City Light Capital, Plug and Play Ventures, and ChinaRock Capital Management participated in the new seed funding, along with several angel investors, including Tony Robbins. A supplier of heart-tracking wearable gadgets, iBeat offers the iBeat Heart Watch with built-in cellular connectivity.

Minim of Manchester, N.H., which provides an IoT platform for in-home cybersecurity, received $2.5 million in seed funding co-led by Flybridge Capital Partners and Founder Collective. Minim will use the money to launch its mobile application for Android and iOS devices, the Minim Care Portal for Internet service providers, and the Minim router agent.

Products/Services
Is AT&T Digital Life on life support? The carrier’s smart home subsidiary seems to be losing favor with AT&T, which is more focused on its proposed $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, opposed by the Trump administration. Reuters reported in August that AT&T Digital Life was on the auction block. Not much has been heard from the subsidiary for the past year, and the unit’s president took on a new post at AT&T, which has declined to comment on the AT&T Digital Life service.

The Eclipse Foundation surveyed 502 IoT developers during the first three months of this year. Among its findings: Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are the leading IoT cloud services, while “Google Cloud Platform is failing to gain traction.” AWS adoption stands at 51.8% this year, a 21% gain from 2017, Microsoft Azure is favored by 31.2% of developers (a 17% year-over-year gain), and Google Cloud Platform is embraced by 18.8% of the respondents, down 8% from a year ago.

Ingram Micro debuted its CloudBlue platform and struck a deal with Microsoft to run CloudBlue on Azure. The distributor said Liquid Telecom has deployed CloudBlue on Azure in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Kenya.

Dell, VMware, and Microsoft are joining forces to support the IoT. Microsoft is contributing its Azure Edge IoT application. VMware is providing Pulse IoT Centre for managing and monitoring IoT devices. Dell brings in its Edge Gateway computers, based on Intel’s dual-core Atom processors.

M&A
Nokia has agreed to sell its Digital Health business to Éric Carreel, co-founder and former chairman of Withings, which Nokia acquired in 2016 and rebranded last year. Financial terms weren’t revealed. The Finnish company plans to complete the transaction before the end of the second quarter.

Chicago-based Uptake Technologies acquired Asset Performance Technologies of Albuquerque, N.M., for an undisclosed amount. APT’s Preventance APM software-as-a-service works with the company’s Asset Strategy Library, a collection of equipment failure modes for preventive maintenance in oil and gas, petrochemical, power generation, and steel, among other industries.

Altair Engineering has purchased the intellectual property assets of CANDI Controls and hired CANDI’s software and technology team. CANDI developed a software platform to connect edge gateway computers with IoT devices. Altair will strengthen its IoT organization and expand the scope of its Carriots offering through the acquisition.

Organizations
The IoT-Ready Interface Specification V1.0 was introduced by the IoT-Ready Alliance on the one-year anniversary of the forming of the alliance, which is developing a standard socket for IoT-enabled light-emitting diode lighting fixtures. The new specification is said to define a socket that allows any IoT sensor or control module to connect with a luminaire or a building system.