Category: Internet of Things

Posts relating to the internet of things, IoT and M2M technologies

Big sports data – how tech is changing the playing field

The internet of things is dramatically changing the world of sports

“When you’re playing, it’s all about the winning but when you retire you realise there’s a lot more to the game,” says former cricketer Adam Gilchrist.

Gilchrist was speaking at an event organised by software giant SAP ahead of a Cricket World Cup quarter final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground yesterday.

SAP were using their sponsorship of the event to demonstrate their big data analytics capabilities and how they are applied to sports and the internet of things.

Like most industries, the sports world is being radically affected by digitalisation as new technologies change everything from coaching and player welfare through to stadium management and fans’ experience.

Enhancing the fan experience

Two days earlier rival Melbourne stadium Etihad in the city’s Docklands district showed off their new connected ground where spectators will get hi-definition video and internet services through a partnership between Telstra and Cisco.

While Etihad’s demonstration was specifically about ‘fan experience’, the use of the internet of things and pervasive wireless access in a stadium can range from paperless ticketing to managing the food and drink franchises.

In the United States, the leader in rolling out connected stadiums, venues are increasingly rolling out beacon technologies allowing spectators to order deliveries to their seats and push special offers during the game.

While neither of the two major Melbourne stadiums offer beacon services at present, the Cisco devices around the Etihad have the facility to add Bluetooth capabilities when the ground managements decide to roll them out.

Looking after players

Probably the greatest impact of technology in sport is with player welfare; while coaches and clubs have been enthusiastic adopters of video and tracking technologies for two decades, the rate of change is accelerating as wearable devices are changing game day tactics and how injuries are managed.

One of the companies leading this has been Melbourne business Catapult Sports which has been placing tracking devices on Australian Rules football players and other codes for a decade.

For coaches this data has been a boon as it’s allowed staff to monitor on field performance and tightly manage players’ health and fitness.

Professional sports in general have been early adopters of new technologies as a small increase in performance can have immediate and lucrative benefits on the field. Over the last thirty years clubs have adopted the latest in video and data technology to help coaches and players.

As the technology develops this adoption is accelerating, administrators are looking at placing tracking devices within the balls, goals and boundary lines to give even more information about what’s happening on the field.

Managing the data flow

The challenge for sports organisations, as with every other industry, is in managing all the data being generated.

In sports managing that data has a number of unique imperatives; gamblers getting access to sensitive data, broadcast rights holders wanting access to game statistics and stadium managers gathering their own data all raise challenges for administrators.

There’s also the question of who owns the data; the players themselves have a claim to their own personal performance data and there could potentially be conflicts when a competitor transfers between clubs.

As the sports industry explores the limits of what they can do with data, the world is changing for players, coaches, administrators and supporters.

Gilchrist’s observation that there’s a lot more to professional sports than just what happens on the field is going to become even more true as data science assumes an even greater role in the management of teams, clubs and stadiums.

Paul travelled to Melbourne as a guest of Cisco and SAP.

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The high cost of distrust

A lack of trust in data is going to cost the world’s economy over a trillion dollars forecast a Cisco panel

A lack of trust in technology’s security could be costing the global economy over a trillion dollars a panel at the Australian Cisco Live in Melbourne heard yesterday.

The panel “how do we create trust?” featured some of Cisco’s executives including John Stewart, the company’s Security and Trust lead, along with Mike Burgess, Telstra’s Chief Information Security Officer and Gary Blair, the CEO of the Australian Cyber Security Research Institute.

Blair sees trust in technology being split into two aspects; “do I as an individual trust an organisation to keep my data secure; safe from harm, safe from breaches and so forth?” He asks, “the second is will they be transparent in using my data and will I have control of my data.”

In turn Stewart sees security as being a big data problem rather than rules, patches and security software; “data driven security is the way forward.” He states, “we are constantly studying data to find out what our current risk profile is, what situations are we facing and what hacks we are facing.”

This was the thrust of last year’s Splunk conference where the CISO of NASDAQ, Mark Graff, described how data analytics were now the front line of information security as threats are so diverse and systems so complex that it’s necessary to watch for abnormal activity rather than try to build fortresses.

The stakes are high for both individual businesses and the economy as technology is now embedded in almost every activity.

“If you suddenly lack confidence in going to online sites, what would happen?” Asks Stewart. “You start using the phone, you go into the bank branch to check your account.”

“We have to get many of these things correct, because going backwards takes us to a place where we don’t know how to get back to.”

Gary Blair described how the Boston Consulting Group forecast digital economy would be worth between 1.5 and 2.5 trillion dollars across the G20 economies by 2016.

“The difference between the two numbers was trust. That’s how large a problem is in economic terms.”

As we move into the internet of things, that trust is going to extend to the integrity of the sensors telling us the state of our crops, transport and energy systems.

The stakes are only going to get higher and the issues more complex which in turn is going to demand well designed robust systems to retain the trust of businesses and users.

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Why Singapore is building a connected city

Singapore is creating the first connected city to meet the challenges of the 21st Century economy

“What if we were to wire up every corner of Singapore?” Asked Steve Leonard, the Executive Deputy Chairman of Singapore’s Infocomm Development Authority, at the CommunicAsia 2013 Summit.

Two years later that question has been answered as the island state has covered the entire island with a fibre network, putting the country on course to create what Leonard describes as a ‘sensor fabric network.’

Speaking to Leonard ahead of his visit to Australia for the AIIA Internet of Things conference in Canberra later this month, it’s impressive what the IDA looks to do in building Singapore as a connected nation.

“We think we have an opportunity to use some of the natural advantages Singapore has,” Leonard says. “In this case being relatively small and an island. The idea that constraints mean creativity.”

One of the areas Leonard sees as an opportunity with the IoT is in the health care industry where chronic care care can be moved back into the community while hospitals and clinics can be used for acute patients.

One of the challenges for every city rolling out an IoT infrastructure is the plethora of standards, “we’re trying to think about IEEE standards and we’re trying to think about interoperable as possible with technology as it evolves.”

“Whether it’s East or West, Singapore wants to be a place where business can be done and people can be healthy,” says Leonard. “What we don’t want to do is develop a standard that might work for us but exclude us from something that originates in another part of the world. We want to be open to things that evolve.”

Becoming a connected city is key to being a leader in a connected world, “we’re always making sure we seek to have more wireless access points.” Leonard says, “we also have one gig ninety-five percent fibre coverage across the island. We also want to enhance our capabilities through 4G and Wi-Fi.”

“All of those things together in some sort of concert create that fabric that we’re working on.”

Historically Singapore’s place in the world has revolved around being a trading hub which has led it to being one of the world’s biggest cargo shipping ports.

With broadband internet access available pretty well throughout the island, it should open opportunities for entrepreneurs, businesses and government agencies to explore how ubiquitous internet creates opportunities.

 

As the world becomes moves from physical goods to bytes, Singapore is looking to becoming as much a technological centre as a goods hub. For Steve Leonard and the IDA the task is to make sure the city takes its place in the connected economy.

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Video and the internet of things

High resolution video coupled with the IoT are part of the Big Data explosion

A few days ago we discussed how 4k video cameras are going to change the sports broadcasting industry.

Yesterday executives from modular data center supplier VCE held a media lunch where they discussed some of their industrial applications. One of the areas they discussed was the monitoring of power stations with large resolution cameras.

The 4k cameras are trained on machine rooms with software watching for irregular conditions such as excessive vibrations, leaks or smoke. Should something out of the ordinary be detected, warnings can be triggered and potentially affected equipment spun down.

With the 4k resolution the cameras are able to watch large areas and like the sports coverage can zoom in for a detailed view of an affected area.

The use of 4k video cameras shows how the internet of things won’t just be about the data gathered from smart devices but also matching the information coming from IoT equipment with that of other environmental factors.

For companies like VCE these sort of applications are an opportunity as they need large amounts of data storage and processing power in local centres.

In many respects these small scale data centers are a large scale example of the fog computing being touted by companies like Cisco where most of the operational tasks are carried out by local equipment with only reports and exceptions being transmitted to the cloud.

This sort of application also shows the demands different industries are going to have for local data processing and storage with the VCE executives suggesting hospitals, mines and sports stadiums are also going to need these facilities.

For VCE – a troubled joint venture between Cisco, storage company EMC and computer virtualisation firm VM Ware – these are the sort of clients they are hoping to find to keep their business running.

Regardless of VCE’s prospects, the need for equipment to manage the data being collected by devices on the Internet of Things and 4k video is going to grow. That could give us one of the clues of where the jobs of the future are going to come from.

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Management struggles with the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things is proving to be a management challenge reports Microsoft

Exactly what benefits does the Internet of Things offer businesses? A survey of Australian businesses by Microsoft claims there are benefits but few companies have deployed the IoT in their operations as managers struggle to understand the technologies.

In the survey “Cut through: How the Internet of Things is sharpening Australia’s competitive edge” carried out by research company Telsyte, Microsoft found two thirds of businesses that  deployed IoT technologies have achieved an average cost saving of 28 percent while half the businesses have improved efficiencies of around the same amount.

A poor take up rate

The devil however is in the details and most notable only a quarter of the 306 companies surveyed admitting to using IoT applications.

While the sample size is small, and the Australian business community has been relatively slow in adopting the IoT, the survey indicates managers see the value but are struggling to see how they can adopt the technologies in their organisations.

Although fewer than one in 20 organisations said they could not foresee any business benefit from IoT, an alarmingly high 48 per cent still have no plans to implement the technology.

This reluctance comes largely from a lack of resources and expertise with the top five reasons for not adopting the IoT being technology challenges, affordability, security concerns, lack of skills and no management support.

Lack of management support

Management’s lack of understanding and support for IoT solutions presents a risk for businesses as the next generation of industrial machinery  – from cars to tractors – will have some connectivity built into it. A failure to understand the technologies built into equipment opens a range of operational and security risks for an organisation.

Another aspect about the implementation of the IoT that comes from this survey is exactly what are we talking about? Microsoft’s emphasis in this report was clearly on the Big Data analytics, something else that might confuse the discussion with management.

What’s clear from the Microsoft’s survey is companies do realise there are benefits from the IoT but managements are struggling to understand the technologies and how to implement them into their operations. This is an opportunity for the savvy integrator or reseller.

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Rampaging Ransomware

How long until we see ransomware infecting smart devices asks a Romanian security researcher?

A few years ago Ransomware was a joke, malware would install a screen that would demand a ransom be paid to ‘unlock’ the computer. It was easy to get around and almost trivial to remove.

Then came Cryptolocker, a nasty piece of malware that would gleefully encrypt a victim’s hard drives, rendering them inaccessible unless a sizeable ransom was paid.

Ransomware suddenly became serious.

Cryptolocker eventually was unpicked with a cracking tool released and the ring’s alleged founder, Evgeniy Bogachev, now on the run from US authorities with a three million dollar reward for his arrest.

A better class of ransomware

Now the gangs running the ransomware scams are even more sophisticated and well resourced with Andrei Taflan of Romanian security company BitDefender describing how Bitcoin values are often tracking ransomware activity.

“When we see Bitcoin values surging we watch for increased ransomware activity. Someone is buying Bitcoins to unlock their data,” Taflan told me last week in an underground bar appropriately called The Rabbit Hole.

Taflan’s colleague Bogdan Botezatu describes how the ransomware problem is getting worse, not better, with Cryptowall patching the weaknesses that led to Bogachev’s downfall.

One of the fascinating aspects of Cryptowall is that it’s polymorpic – it changes shape to elude traditional signature based anti-virus programs. The malware also creates unique Bitcoin wallets to make tracking transaction harder.

Paying the ransom

Many businesses being infected by Cryptowall and having data locked away by an industrial grade encryption program makes it a no brainer to pay the demands. It’s a profitable business.

Faced this rather impressive piece of work, Botezatu raises a chilling prospect about ransomware in the Internet of Things; how long, he asks, will it take ransomware to target more sensitive devices we use, including cars and medical implants?

Botezatu’s concern illustrate why security with the Internet of Things is absolutely essential if industry and the public are to have any confidence in connected devices.

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Locking down the firmware of the internet of things

As the smart devices become common in our homes, cars and workplaces suppliers will have to do more to secure their software.

There’s a fundamental problem with smart devices warns Kim Zetter and Andy Greenberg in Wired magazine.

In Why Firmware Is So Vulnerable to Hacking, and What Can Be Done About It, Zetter and Green look at the problem with the embedded software that is shipped with every computerised device from Personal Computers to smart sensors.

The problem with firmware is that it’s difficult to check it’s not been changed, awkward to upgrade and complex to find, the Wired piece mentions how even the batteries in Apple laptops have vulnerable software embedded into their chips.

As the smart devices become common in our homes, cars and workplaces suppliers will have to do more to secure their software.

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