IoT News of the Week, February 17 2017

Here’s a wrap up of important news in the internet of things this week. You can get this in your inbox each week by subscribing to my newsletter.

This is a good IoT project: London installed equipment to track the WiFi on people’s phones as they traveled through a segment of the London Underground to see what kind of data it would reveal. Transport for London, the city agency responsible for the project, appears to have done everything correctly in setting this up. The agency notified commuters that their WiFi was going to be tracked during the month and told them to turn off the Wi-Fi on their phones if they wanted to avoid the tracking. This is a wonderful level of transparency. The agency also was able to gather data and analyze it far more quickly and with far more detail than its traditional methods. It’s now brainstorming use cases for the data since this was a pilot project to see what would happen, as opposed to a use case driven effort. (Gizmodo UK)

It’s coming from inside the house! This case study about a university computer network where a botnet had taken over connected devices and turned the network against itself is like a horror story for the IT security set. The case study is from a Verizon Security Breach report and details the botnet and how the university let the problem sit until roughly 5,000 machines were compromised. This could be the prank of the future. (Network World)

Another standard for the connected car:  The Open Connectivity Foundation and the GENIVI Alliance will collaborate to develop open standards for vehicle connectivity. These will include security and vehicle-to-vehicle communications standards. Members of GENIVI Alliance include Nissan, BMW, Renault, Volvo and Honda. (GENIVI Alliance)

Placemeter sold to Netgear: Almost two years ago I wrote about Placemeter, a startup that was trying to build a sensor and algorithms that could track the number of people walking by a place. Placemeter was bought in December by Netgear and will be working with the camera division. (Netgear)

Verizon buys a drone company: Verizon is buying its way into the internet of things with purchases of a smart city platform (Sensity), a fleet management platform (Telogis) and now with the acquisition of Skyward, a drone management company. It’s spending here should help it take on rival AT&T which so far is leading when it comes to IoT, primarily because it’s the top provider of connectivity for automakers. Now Verizon is rushing to lock down other possible segments of future revenue.  Based on what I’ve heard from city and enterprise clients, drone connectivity is going to be big. (Wireless Week)

Alexa gets more skills: You can now open the August connected door lock using your Amazon Echo. This ability was a while coming while the two companies tried to enable the ability to unlock a door without causing a security problem for homeowners. The solution is that anyone asking Alexa to unlock their August will have to say a PIN after the command. This is somewhat clumsy since a PIN can be overheard, but it should pave the way for other locks and garage door openers to work with Alexa voice commands. It’s also likely to be really helpful for people who can’t easily get to the door in time. In addition to this skill, Linksys added an Echo skill for its routers. You can turn your guest network on and off and even get credentials for the Wi-Fi network. (Since that is a potential security risk, the user can turn it off if they want.)

In the unintended consequences department: Deploying wireless networks in industrial settings could have unintended side effects on equipment in factories, leading companies to hold off on such systems. Much like the FCC prevented wireless devices on planes and hospitals used to prevent cell phones around their equipment, concerns over how radio signals affect delicate equipment aren’t crazy. So the National Institute of Standards and Technology is trying to understand how wireless networks perform and how they affect other industrial equipment so the wireless revolution that has taken over the consumer and office world can make it to industrial settings. (IEEE Spectrum)

NIST is also looking at IoT security: This would actually be incredibly helpful in establishing some type of baseline security standard for connected devices that manufacturers could work toward. (IoT Newsletter)

Apple’s into wireless too: Speaking of wireless, the rumor mill believes the next iPhone may come with wireless charging built in. Lending credence to this speculation was news this week that Apple is joining the Wireless Power Consortium. This is a big deal because Apple helps normalize technology, and normalizing a wireless power standard could go a long way to making wearables more palatable to people. Right now, there’s a real limit on how many connected devices you may mess with because so many of them require charging. Making it easy to set a device down on a standard charging mat as opposed to plugging it in would go a long way in making battery-powered devices a little less annoying. (The Verge)

How to hack a connected terminal: I learned a lot from this report about ways to get to the command line in various city-owned kiosks. (Securing Smart Cities)

Amazon has a lot of voice data: This article explains how valuable it is and why and then dives into how Amazon might then enter the enterprise. (Medium)