IoT news of the week for Dec. 13, 2019

Here’s a security partnership to merge IT and OT: Pulse Secure has teamed up with Nozomi Networks to provide a comprehensive security monitoring service that can track badly behaving devices on IT (information technology) and OT (operational technology) networks. When malicious behavior is detected, Pulse Secure can quarantine the device or segment it from the network. Pulse Secure has several products designed to protect IT networks and Nozomi has the OT expertise. What’s interesting about the deal is that security has become an ecosystem play as opposed to something a single company can offer. Prakash Mana, VP of product management with Pulse Secure, says that in the last few years those in the security world have realized that they have to work together to stop threats, which makes partnerships like the one Pulse and Nozomi just signed more important. (Pulse Secure)

UL is building security labels for IoT devices: UL, the standards company that ensures our electrical devices aren’t going to cause a fire or blow out our wiring, has been wading into the cybersecurity realm for a while. A few years back, it suggested some security measures for smart home devices, and now it’s offering a bit more clarity (and probably tackling the complexity associated with IoT security) with a five-tier labeling scheme. The tiers start with bronze for the devices meeting the least stringent parameters and go all the way up to diamond. In an interview with CNET, a UL spokesperson said that most IoT devices out there today probably wouldn’t meet the bronze standard. The interview comes on the heels of a June whitepaper published by UL that lays out the different categories. Of course, with all UL standards, you have to pay to see what they entail. (CNET)

Using IoT to keep an eye on infrastructure: It’s no secret that our nation’s roads, bridges, dams, and other physical infrastructure components need some TLC. While the government stalls on funding, municipalities are turning to IoT to figure out which of them need the most urgent attention. But this is also a global problem, and companies are trying to build 3-D models of hard infrastructure with drones, cameras, and AI to figure out exactly which bridges, sewers, railways and more are in the most danger. (ZDnet)

Ecosystems are the new oil: Y’all know that I am all about the need for ecosystems and ongoing relationships when it comes to building out comprehensive IoT products. It looks like others are coming around to this thinking, too. Not only did Dr. Irene Petrick from Intel, my podcast guest this week, spend 10 minutes talking about it with me, but the CEO of Packet also wrote an excellent blog post on the topic. He likens our current obsession with data extraction to fossil fuel extraction, pointing out that it can be a short-sighted goal and has the power to cause irreparable harm. Instead, he urges taking an ecosystem approach with efforts to create value from data, whereby companies and players invest in the ecosystem to create value for all of the participants. I wholeheartedly believe this is what all of our investments in digital transformations should be about, and predict that we’re on the verge of a shift in how we think about building a business. Read it and be forewarned. (Packet)

Look, a UL-certified in-wall smart outlet: There are a lot of firsts with this product from ConnectSense. The company has made an in-wall outlet that can be connected to the internet and controlled via an app, and the outlet has passed a rigorous certification process from Underwriters Laboratories (UL). The UL certification is rare in the smart outlet category. The outlet comes in a 15- or 20-amp version that costs $79 and $99, respectively. It also works with Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant. (The Verge)

LORIOT adds three new availability zones for its LoRa WAN network offering: LoRa is a long-range wireless networking technology that operates on unlicensed networks. Several companies are it using to build out connectivity services for the IoT. One of them is LORIOT, which makes software for organizations that want to build and operate their own LoRaWAN networks. LORIOT serves up its software from a worldwide network comprised of 16 distributed public servers, three of which were just announced this month. Those servers are in Oregon, Singapore, and The Netherlands, and the new zones will mean lower latencies for folks providing networks in those areas. (LORIOT)

IoT jobs are moving to the cloud: Nutanix, a company that provides software to help build and manage flexible cloud-style computing on-premise, has issued its annual report on trends in cloud computing that includes a small tidbit focused on where applications are running. Surprisingly, while overall more workloads are moving away from the cloud, IoT workloads are moving toward the cloud. The report notes a 3.2% increase in IoT workloads moving to the cloud, whereas workloads happening in a traditional data center have fallen 1.3% and the number of jobs running in private clouds is down 8.1%. Equally surprising is how even as more IoT workloads move to the cloud, the report cites IoT and edge computing as reasons for the increase in computing jobs leaving the cloud and returning to local servers or traditional data centers. The rationale behind that shift is to reduce latency and also to ensure more security. (Nutanix)

Wearables are taking clinical trials by storm: I’ve discussed the potential impact that wearable devices can have on the way clinical trials are performed, in particular to make them more accessible and cheaper. And now here’s an entire paper discussing the topic in depth, including pointing out that since 2013 the number of digital elements used in clinical trials has skyrocketed. No wonder Apple’s so interested in health. (Harvard Business School)

GreenWaves launches a new IoT chip: I profiled GreenWaves, a startup building a RISC-V-based processor for the IoT, last year ahead of the launch of its first chip. Now it has released a second processor designed to process 10x larger neural networks while consuming 5x less power. It also added support for bank-grade encryption and several other features designed to improve how it handles machine learning at the edge. For a deep dive into the specs, click through on the release. (GreenWaves)