American farmers hacking their tractors with Ukrainian software are a taste of what’s to come in the connected economy.
What happens when a vehicle manufacturer locks down their products’ software? John Deere’s customers are finding out as American farmers turn to Ukrainian software vendors for software to maintain their tractors.
John Deere’s behaviour is extreme as almost every component of a modern tractor has a software component which leaves farmers at the mercy of the company’s dealers and authorised mechanics.
So understandably the farmers are finding ways to hack their equipment to reduce downtime and costs, something permitted in the US after an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) was granted to vehicle software.
Vendor control over connected vehicles is a bigger problem for consumers than just maintaining the software, as the information collected from these devices becomes more valuable who controls that data becomes more important.
With global supply chains, increased regulatory requirements and demanding markets, the agricultural industries are probably leading the world in applying the Internet of Things and Big Data, so the challenges faced by farmers are things which will affect us all.
As everything from toasters to motor cars become connected and dependent upon code, the conflict between proprietary software, open markets and user rights is going to grow.
Consumers and the free market can only do so much to control the flows of data and who owns them. It’s hard to see how governments can’t become involved in how information is owned, traded and stored.
James Cook University in the Northern Australian city of Cairns hopes to become a leader in internet of things research
In the tropical north of Australia, one university is looking at using the Internet of Things to expand the reach of its research and open new opportunities for the local economy.
On Monday James Cook University opened Australia’s first university IoT lab in Australia.
Based at the Cairns campus in Far North Queensland, the lab is part of the university’s new Internet of Things engineering degree and is supported by Chinese telco vendor Huawei.
The university, which also has campuses in Townsville and Singapore, boasts expertise in areas such as marine sciences, tropical ecology and tropical medicine, all of which are relevant to the IoT and made more relevant by Cairns being the main service centre for much of Australia’s remote Top End and the Torres Strait.
Part of a central mission
“The Internet of Things is based on something that is central to our mission in the Tropics: building greater connectivity between people, place and technology,” said the university’s Vice Chancellor Professor Sandra Harding.
JCU’s IoT degree, the first of its kind in Australia, combines the study of electronic engineering with internet technologies, wireless communications, sensor device, industrial design and cloud computing.
Currently the IoT faculty has 57 first year students, which the university hopes to grow to over 200. The head of the IoT faculty, Professor Wei Xiang, explained why the university decided to offer this course.
Economic drivers
“Primarily it’s driven by the economy, Australia is transitioning from a mining boom to a knowledge and innovation driven economy. So in the middle of 2015, JCU decided to offer an engineering degree in Cairns.”
“The IoT places nicely into traditional strengths at JCU in fields like marine science, marine biology and remote medicine, for example we can use the IoT for reef condition monitoring and our Daintree Rainforest project.”
An electronics Engineer himself, Professor Xiang sees the IoT as the future of industry and leapt at the chance to lead a course when the opportunity arose.
“In the middle of 2015 I thought, ‘this is what I want to do as this is where the future is.'”
Smartcity opportunities
Along with the remote health, marine science and agricultural aspects the City of Cairns itself offers smartcity opportunities. As a moderate sized town of 142,000 relatively isolated from the rest of Australia, Cairns has large tourist traffic coupled with weather extremes – the city gets nearly two meters (80 inches) of rain every summer. Making it a good test bed for new city technologies.
“Cairns Regional Council is very interested in smartcities, I’ve been working very closely with the city council and its innovation team,” says Professor Xiang. “We are also rolling out our smart campus.”
Part of the smart campus initiative is the university installing a NarrowBand-IoT base station provided by its program supporter, Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.
Huawei’s NB-IoT base station
Along with supporting the IoT lab, Huawei also plans to offer JCU IoT students the opportunity to travel to Huawei’s global headquarters in China and its Australian headquarters in Sydney as part of its Seeds for the Future program.
“It gives our students and staff an experimental platform that conforms to the latest IoT international standard,” Professor Xiang said. “It means that as we design devices and sensor networks we can test and configure them using that standard.”
The university’s Vice Chancellor, Sandra Harding shares Professor Xiang’s enthusiasm. “From designing smarter cities, to growing precision agricultural systems, monitoring natural environments in real-time, and creating clever health solutions that work in remote communities,” she says. “We don’t want to be just a part of that future, we want to lead it.”
Paul travelled to James Cook University’s Cairns campus as a guest of Huawei.
Tracking seals with the IoT is making it easier to collect data on our changing environment
Tracking environmental changes across the oceans a huge undertaking. To deal with the scale of the task Australian researchers have started equipping seals marine animals with a maritime equivalent of a fitbit to monitor the effects of our changing planet.
One of the interesting case studies that came across my desk in recent weeks was the IMOS animal tracking program. The Integrated Marine Observing System is a consortium of research institutions lead by the University of Tasmania that collects data for the Australian marine and climate science community and its international collaborators.
The data is collected from ten different technology platforms including floats, ships, autonomous vehicles such as gliders and deep ocean probes, and by fitting tracking devices onto animals.
Along with sharks and fish, seals are one of the animals IMOS use to track water conditions, one of the benefits of using seals is they can transmit data to a satellite when they return to the surface to breath and they never get stuck under ice.
The tags themselves are made by a Scottish company and are designed to gather information on the depth, temperature, salinity of the seas the animals travel in. They are also useful for tracking the behaviour of the animals.
Along with research into conditions across the vast Southern Ocean, IMOS is also being used to monitor the effects of port development in the mining regions of Western Australia and other areas where environments are undergoing dramatic change.
Once the data is collected it’s open to use by the research community in their understanding the effects of a warming planet, that open data and the cloud storage it is based upon are critical to the program’s success as there’s little point in collecting the data.
We have the devices to collect a tremendous amount of data on our environment, whether it’s our personal fitbits, financial records or information on agriculture or wild animals. The challenge though is to use that data effectively.
In the case of a changing environment, understanding what is happening and the effects could be a matter of our survival. While the idea of a fitbit for seals seems cute, the data they collect could prove critical.
Smartphones being the centre of Xiaomi’s product offerings seems to be the common factor in the expanded range of devices, with the company hoping their ecosystem will be a compelling point of difference in a crowded market.
The idea the smartphone will be the centre of people’s connected lifestyles isn’t new but Xiaomi’s bet on low margin home appliances to drive smartphone sales and subscriptions to cloud services seems a brave move.
It may work however, the business models of tomorrow look improbable today.
In a smart connected world awry algorithms pose a number of risks. What should regulators do?
Who is responsible for the effect of renegade computer programs is going to become a serious legal topic as an increasing number of things become ‘intelligent” and connected to the internet.
Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is one of the first regulators to start looking at how companies’ algorithms. In their just released rules for wholesale traders, the FCA sets out the responsibilities for companies and their managers.
“We are determined to embed a culture of personal responsibility within the banking sector,” says the FCA’s Acting Chief Executive Tracey McDermott. “Clear individual accountability should focus minds, drive up standards, and make firms easier to run and to supervise. And if things go wrong, it will allow senior managers to be held to account for misconduct that falls within their area of responsibility.”
The definition of ‘misconduct’ when an algorithm goes awry will undoubtedly prove contentious, as will the idea of ‘personal responsibility’ in the banking sector.
While it’s too tempting to be dismissive of such move in the financial services industry, the FCA’s regulations are a pointer of what most industries are going to face over the next ten years as the more devices make decisions for themselves or communicate with other equipment over the Internet of Things.
In many areas the question of who is responsible for a rogue computer program will be left to the uncertainties of the legal system with no doubt many surprises, injustices, inconsistencies and unintended consequences so the earlier regulators develop a framework for dealing with mishaps the better.
Should the IoT start delivering on its promise of a connected world a poorly designed algorithm in even what should be relatively trivial devices or services may have the potential to cause massive disruption and damage. It’s hard not to imagine many other regulators in other industries are looking at how to attribute responsibilities, if not minimise risk, in a smart connected world.
Cisco’s 2016 security report show businesses are more uncertain than ever about their network defenses. This is a good thing.
The 2016 Cisco Security report is in many ways an encouraging document, while it describes a litany of threats facing the modern business the fact managers are less confident about their defenses is a good thing.
Of the 2432 security executives surveyed 59% claimed their security infrastructure was up to date against 64 percent said the same. Acknowledging this is motivating them to improve their defenses.
For industry, the real concern is the small business sector where there’s a clear decline in the use of IT security tools. As the Target breach showed, trusted contractors and suppliers provide a weakness in an organisation’s systems that malicious actors are keen to exploit.
In Cisco’s analysis, the main reasons for SMBs lack of concern is their belief they are too small to be valuable to hackers and most of their IT management is outsourced.
A shift to the cloud shouldn’t be understated, particularly given many SMBs are shifting their IT functions onto cloud services. While this doesn’t fully protect businesses, the cloud providers certainly offer a far higher level of protection that the local plumbing contractor relying on a mom and pop computer support service.
The bad guys however are responding to that shift with Cisco reporting increased browser based and DNS attacks, both of these are useful in compromising cloud computing services which means both service providers and end users have to be vigilant about security.
At all levels of business though the lack of confidence in security has major ramifications as the Internet of Things is rolled out and common devices start being connected to fragile and often compromised networks.
The good news for vendors like Cisco is this lack of confidence could spur a new wave of business investment as companies improve their network security.
Another important aspect of CIOs and business owners not being confident about their network security is they are far less likely to assume their systems are safe or to passively accept vendor assurances about their safety.
For all of us a customers and users of these technologies, a greater focus on security by the organisations we deal with should be welcomed as well.
Making the IoT simple and safe is the most important tasks facing Internet of Things vendors
Ten years ago a joke going around was “what if Microsoft built cars?” The answer summed up the frustrations users had with personal computers and the differences in engineering standards between traditional industries and that of the IT sector.
As we enter the Internet of Things era, that tension between consumer devices and good engineering continues as shown by a software bug that rendered Nest thermostats useless.
That poor software would drain the battery without warning the user, illustrates how poorly designed many of these devices are.
Ironically Nest’s owners, Google, held a conference earlier this week where the company’s leaders flagged the importance of standards, security and privacy.
In a call to action for the IoT industry, Google’s lead advocate Vint Cerf, also known as one of the “fathers of the Internet,” warned that compatibility, security, and privacy could be obstacles to the IoT’s success.
Reliability is also important, particularly when talking about safety and security – Nest also make carbon monoxide detectors – where a device crashing or failing can have terrible consequences.
At present most of the Internet of Things is about the gimmick of connecting devices to the cloud and controlling them from your mobile phone. Consumers are not going to embrace IoT products if they add cost, complexity and risk to their lives.
Keeping it simple and safe are probably the most important things designers of IoT devices can do.
Why big companies “suck” at innovating and CEOs have great hair
Last week I posted a long interview with Kevin Ashton, the man who coined the ‘Internet of Things’ tag, on startups, innovation and how the media manages to misreport technology. It was a good, but lengthy, interview.
How do companies analyse the data coming off wearable devices? At the Las Vegas Splunk.Conf, the developers of wearable communications device Onyx showed off how they use data to enhance their business.
A lightweight push to talk device that can be clipped to a shirt, jacket or bag strap the Onyx is designed for teams to easily communicate. The device has a microphone, speaker and GPS that tethers with a smartphone, which in turn connects to Orion’s cloud network and communicates with groups defined by the user.
“Our goal and mission at Orion is to make this as easy and seamless at possible,” says Dan Phung, the company’s software engineer. “Technology is something you shouldn’t have to deal with.”
Some of the data Orion collects are the battery levels in the devices, time spent on conversations and volume levels that gives the company insights into useage patterns. One of the big benefits they’ve found as a startup is in tracking what operating systems are being used, enabling them to carry out what Phung calls “data driven engineering decisions”
As a startup with a team of 35, they managed to get the Onyx to market in a year, having that ‘operational intelligence’ has allowed the startup to focus its scarce resources in the areas where the device is being used and not waste time developing for systems that are less popular.
The Orion Onyx is a good example of how a business can get valuable information from a limited data set from a relatively simple device, their use of Splunk also shows the value of being able to analyse that data quickly.
Paul travelled to Splunk.conf in Las Vegas as a guest of Splunk
Can Splunk use data analytics to make IT sexy again?
“We’re early in the marathon but making good progress”, opened Godfrey Sullivan, the CEO of Splunk, as he opened the company’s annual conference in Las Vegas today.
Helping businesses understand their data has proved lucrative for Splunk with the analytics company seeing a 46% increase in year on year revenue to $148 million for the last quarter with the organisation narrowing its losses over the same period.
As with all tech conferences, the focus in the opening keynote is on new product announcements. For Splunk, the main release is its latest enterprise version of Splunk Enterprise 6.3 billed as delivering faster results, better analytics and tying into the masses of machine data being collected from the Internet of Things.
Machine data as a cornerstone
That IoT data is a key part of Sullivan’s strategy of “making machine data more accessible usable and valuable to everyone.” The company also highlights their alliances with IoT data consolidator services such as Xively and Octoblu.
Security is another focus of Splunk with the launch of Splunk User Behavior Analytics (UBA) that analyses usage patterns on networks to identify risky or suspicious activity and a version upgrade of their their Enterprise Security.
The original business of Splunk was to monitor server log files and that IT focus remains with their new IT Service Intelligence (ITSI), an improved IT monitoring and analytics service.
Sullivan’s key message was that IT departments can be offering ‘operational intelligence’ as they gather and analyse data from all aspects of a business. “IT departments have to earn a seat at the table”, as Splunk’s CTO Snehal Antani says and providing rich data analytics, in his view, enable this.
Surprising a bank
Antani cited one of his previous clients, a bank which would ordinarily would deal with ten million dollars of deposits a day so an alarm had been set for when less than half of that had been received by midday.
One day that alarm sounded, and the IT department assumed there was a problem with the bank’s systems. After checking, they found everything was running normally so flagged deposits were unusually low to senior management.
It turned out to be a competitor had launched a successful campaign to open new accounts which had caught the bank by surprise. “The CMO acted as if he’d been hacked,” Antani recalls.
Antani’s anecdote illustrates how business data is no longer just the concern of the IT department and a small group of geeky business analysts, with real time information every part of an organisation can improve its performance.
For Splunk, using data to improve all aspects of business its key message to the market and one it hopes to drive its business forward although it’s highly unlikely they’ll achieve Antani’s hopes of “making IT sexy again.” That would take much more than a marathon.
Paul travelled to the Splunk.conf in Las Vegas as a guest of Splunk
Recent security problems start focusing the minds of those designing the Internet of Things and connected cars
Last month’s remote hacking of Jeeps through their entertainment systems was a wake up call to the technology industry as it underscored the risks of connected devices and now a series of initiatives are looking at improving the security landscape.
One of the benefits of the new top level domain regime, despite its reeking of rent seeking by the ICANN names agency, is larger companies and industry groups can improve management of their online identities and those of the services and devices their operations rely upon.
Top level security
Having their own top level domains and being able to issue security certificates for devices and services within their own walled gardens means financial institutions, hardware vendors and service providers can have more confidence in the identities of those they are dealing with.
Bloomberg Business examines how corporations are applying for domains to enhance and while the focus is on guaranteeing the veracity of their websites, the scope in having done that expands to a range of other application, particularly that of ensuring everything from bank point of sale equipment through to connected cars and kettles are authenticated.
A top level domain is only part of the answer though and for the systems to work effectively there has to be more sophisticated ways for systems to ensure they are talking to trusted parties. This need becomes particularly acute with automated systems making business decisions in milliseconds where corrupt or incorrect data can cause havoc with financial markets or supply chains.
Blockchain’s potential
Some of the work being done around Bitcoin, particularly with the use of Blockchain technology to ensure transactions are valid, is one intriguing area where researchers are looking at ensuring all parties in a connected society are genuine and trustworthy.
It’s early days yet in the development of these services and there will be many mistakes as businesses and consumers adopt services where security hasn’t been properly thought through or implemented.
With autonomous vehicles authentication is essential, not just for the passengers or operator starting the car but for all the devices and services communicating from outside and within. As the Jeep hack showed, the braking system needs to have confidence the instructions its receiving are genuine and not coming from a malicious outsider.
Outside the car other services will be communicating, the vehicle’s navigation system needs to be confident the mapping information it’s receiving is reliable and from the genuine provider. Similarly plans to reduce the road toll using roadside devices and other cars needs to ascertain the data being transmitted about highway conditions is trustworthy.
It’s often said computers are only as smart as the data going into them – garbage in, garbage out is the classic saying of the computer industry. As we move into a world where more decisions are being made by machines, those systems are going to become more demanding that information is trustworthy.
Is being designated a ‘smart region’ enough to diversify South East Queensland’s economy?
Australia is one of the world’s most urbanised countries with the bulk of the nation’s population clustering in half a dozen centres mainly strung along the east coast of the continent.
The northernmost of Australia’s population centres is South East Queensland, a sprawling collection of suburbs extending from the upper class enclave of Noosa Heads down to the Gold Coast and the New South Wales state border.
Cisco believe this sprawling region of three million people can become a ‘Smart Region’ with the use of technologies such as intelligent lighting and parking, citizen applications, and smart power metering could add up to 30,000 jobs and $10 billion of value to the community over coming years.
“The residents of South East Queensland told us they want to experience greater convenience and integration of public transport, greater digital engagement and intimacy in their cities, more reliable local government services, and new digital ways to further reduce the cost of red tape,” said Cisco Australia & New Zealand Vice President Ken Boal in releasing the South East Queensland: A Smart Region report.
Local civic leaders in the cities making up the South East Queensland conurbation see this as an opportunity to grow their economies. “The future of cities and regions and their ability to create enduring employment opportunities are entirely linked to their digital capabilities,” says Sunshine Coast Mayor Cr Mark Jamieson while Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale said Ipswich was already preparing for a strong future as a digital city.
“We have recognized that building and taking advantage of digital highways now will set Ipswich on a secure and successful path to capitalise on the ballooning digital economy,” said Cr Pisasale.
For South East Queensland, the challenge in creating new industries and jobs is becoming acute. The Australian miracle economy has left the region – like most of the nation – hopelessly uncompetitive and the bulk of employment is in domestically facing service industries underpinned by property prices.
In fact, the residential construction industry has been the mainstay of the SE Queensland economy and the region remains probably the most economically volatile of the Australian conurbations given its high dependence upon the building sector.
The digital economy does hold out hope for diversifying South East Queensland’s economy from building and domestic tourism, but the work is just beginning. Cisco’s smart region initiative is a first step, but there’s much more work to be done by business and civic leaders.
Brisbane image, “Brisbane CBDandSB” by Stuart Edwards. – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brisbane_CBDandSB.jpg#/media/File:Brisbane_CBDandSB.jpg
