IoT news of the week for Jan. 25, 2019

Microsoft is cool with some kind of global GDPR: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spoke at Davos this week and suggested that the U.S. should develop some data protection regulation in line with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. He also suggested that China do something similar. This isn’t an altruistic statement about Microsoft’s views on privacy. This is a practical effort to avoid getting a hodgepodge of state- and country-specific privacy regulations that increase the cost of storing and processing data in the cloud. Already data localization efforts require Microsoft and other cloud providers to have data centers in many corners of the world. Imagine if the number of places requiring individual data centers increased 10-fold because of new rules. (Business Insider)

Edge computing needs a killer app: This is an excellent overview of the challenges associated with developing for the edge today. The writer compares the development of the internet and its browser-inspired breakthrough to the public to where we are today. Basically, we are in the pre-Netscape era of the edge and until we commodify the underlying infrastructure or get a killer app, the edge will stagnate because it’s too hard to build for it. This is one reason the LF Edge project mentioned above is so interesting to me. (LinkedIn)

Amazon is joining the board of the ZigBee Alliance: Unlike when Apple joined the Thread Group last year, this news isn’t quite a shock. But it is a big endorsement from the online retailer in the ZigBee wireless mesh networking standard. Amazon has used ZigBee in its Echo Plus device and apparently is interested enough in continuing the radio development that it has joined the Board of the ZigBee standards body. (ZigBee Alliance)

Let’s talk about smart highways: I was surprised by this article, which seems to define a smart highway as one that’s packed with sensors, uses AI to help solve congestion and prevent accidents, and is solar powered. The premise is that the first such smart highway will be built in China because bureaucracy elsewhere is just too much to overcome the pilot purgatory many such projects currently find themselves in. China also has an advantage because it is a leading developer of solar technology as well as a country currently in the midst of gigantic infrastructure projects. Thus it has the tech, the regulatory environment, and the skill set to build the first smart highway. (TechCrunch)

IoT networks should take tips from frogs: Yes, frogs. Researchers in Japan have published a paper suggesting that the way frogs communicate over large distances and in large numbers without croaking over another might hold the key to preventing packet collisions in IoT sensor networks. Modeling frog communication patterns could help researchers model ways to adjust the timing in IoT network communications to avoid a cacophony of data, turning it instead into a chorus. (Network World)

Using sensors to detect honeypots: If you want to distribute malware, you want to avoid getting caught and having your malware identified and then protected against. To avoid honeypots, researchers are seeing Android malware that won’t run unless it senses motion from the phone’s accelerometer. Since anyone running the malware on an emulator probably hasn’t created some false sense of motion, then strangely still devices won’t cause the malware to run. I look at this as another example of human ingenuity when it comes to security. (Ars Technica)

Encrypt all the things: When your connected device sends data from the device to a mobile app, the traffic is likely unencrypted. This means that any malicious party listening in on your network traffic can get a copy of that password and later use it to control the device. Sure, this Barracuda report is trying to sell firewalls so people can’t get on the network, but to me, it’s really selling encryption. There are way too many endpoints in the IoT for us to put firewalls around every single one. Instead, all traffic has to be encrypted. Read this if you want to understand the attack. (Barracuda Networks)

Is IoT the new weak security link? This article proposes an idea that it’s no longer humans that are the biggest problem in IT networks. Now the weakest link is connected devices, specifically those that aren’t tracked or even known to IT. While nothing earth-shattering, the article talks about the challenges of IoT device authenticity and proposes a few solutions for IoT device security. If you are looking to develop your devops knowledge, why not look for Agile Training Courses near you? (Devops.com)

The most fascinating thing I’ve read all week: This has little to do with IoT, but it has a lot to do with decentralization, which is a topic I love. When you apply decentralization to the dark web apparently you get something called Dropganging, which is a new method of trading illicit goods using a combination of messaging app channels, a layered infrastructure, and dead drops to pick up physical goods. These dead drops sometimes use Bluetooth beacons as a means of identifying them for the recipient of the goods. Even if the IoT connection is tenuous, it’s a fascinating read. I appreciate the person who sent this to me. (Opaque.link)

A deep dive on an Indian LoRa network: When we talk about scale, we can mean anything from serving 100,000 users to 1 billion. In IoT, we may talk about 10,000 sensors to 10 billion. Scale means different things depending on the context and the use case. That’s why I loved this article from a Tata Communications employee detailing what the company is doing in Mumbai and other Indian cities to deploy intelligence. It started with a LoRa network and branches out to connected traffic lights, trash cans, and water meters. The story offers a lot of detail (although I always want more) on how the projects will work and what is real vs. what is planned. It is also clear about the current benefits connectivity is offering today, and how it helps stretch India’s resources further. (IEEE Spectrum)

More Stacey: In my monthly column over at IEEE Spectrum, in response to my editor’s questions about the Amazon microwave that talks to Alexa, I write about why smart products have to be smart, not just connected. (IEEE Spectrum)