IoT news of the week for Oct. 1, 2021

Sternum gets $27 million for IoT Security: IoT security is a constant source of struggle for companies, so it’s not surprising that we have yet another IoT security startup raising funds. Sternum is a three-year-old Israeli startup that provides agentless security on resource-constrained devices. The startup’s technology monitors a device’s runtime performance and alerts when the device performs oddly. It also checks devices against a cloud-provided service that looks for vulnerabilities. The device-to-cloud connection and the analysis of how a device behaves are both trending areas of a layered approach to IoT security. (VentureBeat)

DroneSeed raises $36 million, and you can learn about the economics of reforestation: DroneSeed is a company that makes a person-sized drone that can shoot specially designed seed pucks into the ground as part of a large-scale reforestation effort. The drone has a camera that can determine hospitable places to plant seeds and can be outfitted with an herbicide to tackle invasive weeds that tend to grow after a wildfire. The funding is nice, but this article offers a surprisingly in-depth education on the challenges of reforestation and the changing economics and priorities around the topic. Check it out. (TechCrunch)

Wyze offers an updated scale: Another week, another new Wyze device. This time, the company is announcing an updated scale that will track 11 different metrics including body fat percentage and heart rate and have modes for luggage, pets, and babies. The new scale will cost $14.99 and is available for sale now, but ships in November. I have the current version of this scale, and it’s fine if a bit depressing to get a readout showing your metabolic age (39!) and your visceral fat (not telling!). Please don’t buy this as a holiday or birthday present for a loved one. (Wyze)

Lexmark gets into the IoT platform game: Just when I thought we were done launching new IoT platforms, Lexmark, a company I associated with printers, has released its Optra IoT Platform consisting of technology and consulting. The Optra platform will provide the hardware that Lexmark has built for its own devices and tie into Lexmark’s cloud. Customers will also have access to algorithms to help turn data into actual insights and dashboards to share data with colleagues. The consulting is a nice touch, but plenty of companies including C3 and Kyligence offer existing algorithms to help people get insights from their data without a data scientist. And based on the fun I’ve had in the past with connecting printers and their security, I’m not sure the hardware is something I’m super stoked about. (Lexmark)

A good breakdown on the lack of location privacy: This isn’t exactly an IoT story. It focuses on the $12 billion market for smartphone location data, and details what companies play in this area and the lack of regulatory oversight that can lead to all kinds of privacy violations. I include it here because it’s good and because I want people to understand that the IoT could provide even more data to unscrupulous players if we don’t establish rules about who can access and how companies can use IoT data. Tech firms have a vested interest in keeping regulation away, but if we want to reap the benefits of smarter homes and wearables, we need good regulations now, not later. (The Markup)

We need a new encryption scheme for distributed devices: This article is so good I wish I had written it. The author looks at Ring’s end-to-end encryption of its video files and rightly notes that in this case adding more security hampers functionality, preventing the user from sharing and sometimes accessing their videos. She uses Ring as an example to show why the model of asymmetric key encryption for end-to-end encryption designed for the one-to-one world of computing doesn’t apply to the IoT and its distributed architecture. She calls for new encryption options and names a few. If you want to talk about this, please call me. (Security Intelligence)

Keep an eye on this IoT security research: Researchers at the University of Missouri have been awarded $500,000 from the National Security Agency (NSA) to teach smart devices to automatically detect threats and share that information throughout a network. The goal is to build more secure connected devices that can act autonomously and provide security at scale. This is clearly necessary research, given how terrible we all are at patching our devices, so I look forward to seeing what the researchers in the College of Engineering develop. (University of Missouri)

Can an algorithm really break IIoT’s 80-20 challenge? One of the challenges in industrial IoT is that a company can only get so far building a solution that works for everyone. Most clients require a lot of customizations along industry lines because of specific production, regulatory or other demands. This makes it tough to build generic IoT products. Consultants often cite the 80-20 rule when discussing this program —the idea that you can reuse 80 percent of your work and must customize the last 20 percent. But that 20 percent is often too much for a startup trying to build across more than one or two verticals. This article highlights an app for Software AG’s Cumulocity IoT platform that delivers an algorithm that measures the overall productivity of a factory and can do it even when not fully customized for the industry vertical. This algorithm called the Overall Equipment Effectiveness is what most factories are after when they invest in the IoT, so if Software AG has really delivered, this is a big deal. (Diginomica)

Ingenu is going to space: Ingenu, the proprietary low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) for connected devices, is both still around and has signed a deal with Phantom Space Corp to build and launch 72 satellites into orbit. Ingenu rebranded in 2015 and was one of several companies trying to make it with a proprietary LPWAN offering. It has customers in mining and industrial IoT. Its satellites will launch in 2023 and will provide additional network coverage as well as global coverage for areas where it doesn’t have the infrastructure. I’m surprised by the move, but satellites are hot right now and there’s still no clear winner in LPWAN. (Yahoo)

Nokia shows off private 5G for mining: Nokia worked with AngloGold Ashanti Colombia to build a test 5G network designed for underground mining. The test proved that private 5G networks were sufficient for mission-critical communications, connectivity and remote teleoperation of vehicles, mining machinery and systems, and inspection and monitoring with drones and high-definition cameras. These use cases all have carrying degrees of bandwidth requirements, but most are latency-sensitive, which is where 5G can really excel. I’m still waiting for widescale production use cases involving industrial IoT and 5G, but I’ll take another test I suppose. (Nokia)