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What is the IoT? Everything you need to know about the Internet of Things
- By Elite CIO
Dec 28, 2020
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What is the IoT? Everything you need to know about the Internet of Things
What is the Internet of Things?
The Internet of Things, or IoT, refers to the billions of physical devices around the world that are now connected to the internet, all collecting and sharing data. Thanks to the arrival of super-cheap computer chips and the ubiquity of wireless networks, it's possible to turn anything, from something as small as a pill to something as big as an aeroplane, into a part of the IoT. Connecting up all these different objects and adding sensors to them adds a level of digital intelligence to devices that would be otherwise dumb, enabling them to communicate real-time data without involving a human being. The Internet of Things is making the fabric of the world around us more smarter and more responsive, merging the digital and physical universes.
How big is the Internet of Things?
Big and getting bigger -- there are already more connected things than people in the world. Tech analyst company IDC predicts that in total there will be 41.6 billion connected IoT devices by 2025, or "things." It also suggests industrial and automotive equipment represent the largest opportunity of connected "things,", but it also sees strong adoption of smart home and wearable devices in the near term.
Another tech analyst, Gartner, predicts that the enterprise and automotive sectors will account for 5.8 billion devices this year, up almost a quarter on 2019. Utilities will be the highest user of IoT, thanks to the continuing roll out of smart meters. Security devices, in the form of intruder detection and web cameras will be the second biggest use of IoT devices. Building automation like connected lighting will be the fastest growing sector, followed by automotive (connected cars) and healthcare (monitoring of chronic conditions).
IoT, privacy and business
Consumers need to understand the exchange they are making and whether they are happy with that. Some of the same issues apply to business: would your executive team be happy to discuss a merger in a meeting room equipped with smart speakers and cameras, for example? One recent survey found that four out of five companies would be unable to identify all the IoT devices on their network.
Badly installed IoT products could easily open up corporate networks to attack by hackers, or simply leak data. It might seem like a trivial threat but imagine if the smart locks at your office refused to open one morning or the smart weather station in the CEO's office was used by hackers to create a backdoor into your network.
The IoT and cyberwarfare
The IoT makes computing physical. So if things go wrong with IoT devices, there can be major real-world consequences -- something that nations planning their cyberwarfare strategies are now taking into account. US intelligence community briefings have warned that the country's adversaries already have the ability to threaten its critical infrastructure as well "as the broader ecosystem of connected consumer and industrial devices known as the Internet of Things". US intelligence has also warned that connected thermostats, cameras, and cookers could all be used either to spy on citizens of another country, or to cause havoc if they were hacked. Adding key elements of national critical infrastructure (like dams, bridges, and elements of the electricity grid) to the IoT makes it even more vital that security is as tight as possible.
Internet of Things and big data analytics
The IoT generates vast amounts of data: from sensors attached to machine parts or environment sensors, or the words we shout at our smart speakers. That means the IoT is a significant driver of big-data analytics projects because it allows companies to create vast data sets and analyse them. Giving a manufacturer vast amounts of data about how its components behave in real-world situations can help them to make improvements much more rapidly, while data culled from sensors around a city could help planners make traffic flow more efficiently.
That data will come in many different forms voice requests, video, temperature or other sensor readings, all of which can be mined for insight. As analyst IDC notes, IoT metadata category is a growing source of data to be managed and leveraged. "Metadata is a prime candidate to be fed into NoSQL databases like MongoDB to bring structure to unstructured content or fed into cognitive systems to bring new levels of understanding, intelligence, and order to outwardly random environments," it said.
In particular, the IoT will deliver large amounts of real-time data. Cisco calculates that machine-to machine connections that support IoT applications will account for more than half of the total 27.1 billion devices and connections, and will account for 5% of global IP traffic by 2021.
Internet of Things and the cloud
The huge amount of data that IoT applications generate means that many companies will choose to do their data processing in the cloud rather than build huge amounts of in-house capacity. Cloud computing giants are already courting these companies: Microsoft has its Azure IoT suite, while Amazon Web Services provides a range of IoT services, as does Google Cloud.
IoT data and artificial intelligence
IoT devices generate vast amounts of data; that might be information about an engine's temperature or whether a door is open or closed or the reading from a smart meter. All this IoT data has to be collected, stored and analysed. One way companies are making the most of this data is to feed it into artificial intelligence (AI) systems that will take that IoT data and use it to make predictions.
For example, Google has put an AI in charge of its data centre cooling system. The AI uses data pulled from thousands of IoT sensors, which is fed into deep neural networks, and which predict how different choices will affect future energy consumption. By using machine learning and AI, Google has been able to make its data centres more efficient and said the same technology could have uses in other industrial settings.
IoT evolution: Where does the Internet of Things go next?
As the price of sensors and communications continue to drop, it becomes cost-effective to add more devices to the IoT even if in some cases there's little obvious benefit to consumers. Deployments are at an early stage; most companies that are engaging with the IoT are at the trial stage right now, largely because the necessary technology sensor technology, 5G and machine-learning powered analytics are still themselves at a reasonably early stage of development. There are many competing platforms and standards and many different vendors, from device makers to software companies to network operators, want a slice of the pie. It's still not clear which of those will win out. But without standards, and with security an ongoing issue, we are likely to see some more big IoT security mishaps in the next few years.
As the number of connected devices continues to rise, our living and working environments will become filled with smart products assuming we are willing to accept the security and privacy trade-offs. Some will welcome the new era of smart things. Others will pine for the days when a chair was simply a chair.