Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis

Internet of Things

  • Home
  • Analysis
  • Startups
  • How-To
  • News
  • Podcast
  • Events
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Speaking
    • Facebook
    • RSS
    • Twitter
    • YouTube

Industrial IoT meets the blockchain with Xage

December 19, 2017 by Stacey Higginbotham 2 Comments

Xage’s software is useful to help secure the large number of smart meters that are part of the electrical grid.

I don’t think I could make a hotter sounding startup at the end of 2017 than Xage (pronounced Zage). The company, which was founded in mid-2016, has redesigned security for the industrial internet of things using blockchain and other decentralized technologies. It combines industrial IoT, security and blockchain into a single startup that has raised capital from March Capital, the Hive and others. If you would like to better understand blockchain technology and how it relates to the world of cryptocurrencies, you might want to check out VanillaCrypto.com to begin learning the basics.

Xage’s core idea is that in an industrial setting there are too many sensors, computers and people communicating at any given point in time, so a centralized security architecture doesn’t make sense if information needs to travel quickly. The obvious solution for Xage’s founders was to use a distributed mechanism. In this case, Xage is using blockchain to track data requests across the system and an algorithm called Shamir’s Secret Sharing to scatter data and reconstruct it from the nodes in the system.

The end goal is a system of sensors and computers that track what’s happening in real time and then adapt to circumstances with security built in. The security comes in the form of auditing thanks to blockchain (Xage uses the IBM Hyperledger standard) and tokens that grant authorization to command a device reconstructed using Shamir’s Secret Sharing.

As someone who writes about IoT, I’m wondering if this is the new security model we might need for a world of millions (or trillions) of distributed, connected things.

Xage’s software can run on a few kilobits of memory so it can sit on tiny sensors. Xage also has partnerships with companies like Dell to put the software on industrial gateways. It also ties into existing systems, such as Microsoft’s Active Directory, that manages what privileges individual employees have. Thus the things can now link up with people in a trackable and secure way.

Customers such as industrial giant ABB are using Xage, as is smart metering company Itron.

Want the latest IoT news and analysis? Get my newsletter in your inbox every Friday.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Featured, Startups Tagged With: blockchain, dell, industrial iot, security, Xage

Sponsors



Become a sponsor

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to receive notifications of new posts by email.

Comments

  1. rufus reynolds says

    June 13, 2018 at 4:59 am

    I know this site provides quality dependent articles or reviews and extra data, is there
    any other site which gives these kinds of information in quality?

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

IoT Podcast

Listen to the latest episode of the Internet of Things Podcast. Just press play!

Sponsors

Become a sponsor







Get Stacey’s free weekly Internet of Things newsletter

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Recent Comments

  • Jeff Safire on The Homey bridge is a simple (but sweet) home hub
  • Lawrence K on Podcast: What the heck is an IoT hyperscaler?
  • Stacey Higginbotham on The Homey bridge is a simple (but sweet) home hub
  • John on The Homey bridge is a simple (but sweet) home hub

Stacey on Twitter

Tweets by gigastacey
Copyright © 2023 SKT Labs, LLC · Privacy Policy