Internet of Things news of the week, March 24 2017

Here’s this week’s curated list of IoT news. Get this in your inbox every Friday when you sign up for Stacey’s newsletter.

The CTA releases a connected device security checklist: Security is becoming a big thorn in the side of connected device makers, so the Consumer Technology Association, the group that puts on CES, has put out a list of recommended best practices. The guide is for connected home dealers and professionals and aims to help them install and configure connected products and systems. The guide itself has an excellent section that everyone should read about securing your Wi-Fi network and installing your own router. It’s designed for anyone who wants to install a connected home, as opposed to those building devices.  (CTA)

And then there’s industrial IoT security: Securing your Wi-Fi router isn’t enough for the makers of giant industrial operations, as a report by a security firm shows that hackers have used malware disguised as Siemens firmware to infiltrate up to 10 different manufacturing sites. The attacks have been active for the last four years and as recently as this year. We’re going to need a lot more secure silicon in active use to stop these threats. (The Register)

Say hello to Netflix in the car:  Jaguar/Land Rover said it will charge $20 per month to customers so up to 8 devices can use the car’s Wi-Fi network.  Buyers will have the option to buy this AT&T service in 30-day increments (although it will renew automatically if not canceled). I could see shelling out for this ahead of a long road trip so my kid can watch Netflix on the go. Of course, I’m not sure how far AT&T’s LTE network extends once you’re on the highways of rural America.  (Jaguar)

From police surveillance to saving rhinos: This profile in National Geographic of an anti-poaching group that’s using a map as a way to aggregate real-time data across several different databases to help track wildlife reminded me of something. The article provides an uncritical view of software called Domain Awareness System (DAS) created with Vulcan, a Seattle-based company established by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. What struck me was that the name of the software, the involvement of someone from Microsoft and the description all sound like a police crime monitoring tool developed by Microsoft and the NYPD. It was deployed in 2012 in Manhattan.  Are they the same tech put to different uses? (National Geographic)

Company gets $54 million to automate AI: DataRobot raised $54 million this week, bringing its total amount of funding raised to $111 million. That’s a boatload of money for a company that is making a huge assertion, namely that it can automate the development of AI. I don’t really believe this, since the top minds at Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Baidu are hard at work publishing papers on their incomplete efforts here, but AI is a powerful lure for VC dollars. I do, however, believe it can make machine learning easier for businesses to implement. (DataRobot)

Sound is underrated: Chirp is a company that I’ve seen but never really got excited about…until I read this profile. It has technology that embeds information in sound files and allows those files to be translated on another device. It’s like a QR code for sound. As long as it’s an opt-in effort to receive the message, it’s an intriguing way to think about sharing information like passenger delays sent to folks waiting on a bus platform. Of course, it also seems like a really efficient way to phish or spread malicious data. (Disruption)

How AI breaks the SaaS model: A fun aspect of technology that many tech reporters ignore is that it changes the types of business models that make sense. IoT will be no exception, and this story shows why. The focus is on how AI and bots will be more productive than humans, so companies will need to buy fewer seats for a SaaS software. However, deploying software that is more reliant on AI could get more expensive since it requires more compute power. So delivering the software costs more and because it is so efficient fewer people will need to buy it. One solution is to raise the price, but another might be to change from a per seat model to a transaction model, exactly what some companies do when they are measuring their value in terms of API calls as opposed to a customer seat.  Some IoT companies are playing with this as a pricing model. We’ll see how it works. (VentureBeat)

Thoughts on Nest’s Bluetooth hack: This week a hacker disclosed a vulnerability that he discovered last year in some Nest devices. The hack takes advantage of the Bluetooth on the cameras to allow them to connect to a new hacker-provided Wi-Fi network. What’s somewhat ironic about this hack is that many companies have added Bluetooth to their efforts to get products online. Earlier devices used Wi-Fi only, but then if something went wrong, the device maker had no information to use to try to help the consumer make the connection. It worked or it didn’t. By adding Bluetooth, the device maker can figure out what went wrong and tell the consumer in the app using the Bluetooth connection. Sadly, if you don’t disable that Bluetooth communication afterward, others can use it to connect to the device themselves. One step forward, two steps back. (Github)

Is Amazon Alexa over the smart home? Jeff Bezos is pushing to make games the next big category for the Amazon Echo, according to the Information. The new focus comes after an emphasis on the smart home that helped boost the number of things you could do with your connected devices by 60% since January to a total of 277 smart home skills. (The Information)

Lasers in space! This is in here mostly because it involves NASA, lasers and broadband from space. NASA is demonstrating a project to use lasers to communicate between earth and the International Space Station. This is exactly the sort of thing I like to talk about during my weekend parties. My parties might be somewhat lame. (NASA)

Want to test your knowledge of basic cybersecurity? Check this quiz at Pew Research. I missed the one about VPNs and still feel like I should have known this. (Pew)