Thursday, May 19, 2016

Internet, Internet of Things and Cyber Threats

Internet of Things or “IoT,’ as commonly referred to, have proliferated our culture and will continue as they acquire growing attention with functionality and ease.  Their attraction is in their usefulness engendering efficiency, productivity, and an expectation of enhancing one’s fitness and along with self-awareness. The idea of IoT has brought the attention of platform designers that has replaced the smaller developers who were focused on the utility of one product’s ability to sync with a network.  This aspect of growing platforms causes policy and technical concerns for liability and protecting privacy and for securing the integrity of financial transactions.  The rude awakening for the NTIA is that they will find out that their paradigm is changing faster than their efforts to grasp how to address consumer privacy protection issues and business data, i.e., trade secrets.
The notion of a variety of devices being connected to a shared network, of some sort, has prodded the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to seek advisory comments on a variety of aspects that are related to cyber security, potential threats, and liabilities.  Last month, the NTIA did just that by issuing a request for public comment (RPC).  The NTIA is seeking to know what varied perspectives and circumstances that must be accounted when considering the balance of the benefits of IoT along with the foreseen and unforeseen consequences, including the shared network structural and legal challenges.   NTIA is also leaning towards determining what would be government’s best role in this internet realm of evolving technology.

As it already has commented, the weak link theory in life may very well apply to this phenomenon of the IoT plethora.  As is rudimentarily described, it is the network syncing of varied devices, whether its computer, router, house alarm, streaming box, mobile phone, or your home security cameras, that draws concern to eventful weak link compromising the user’s personal confidential information.  The Internet is the communications vehicle among people and their varied daily used devices sought to achieve their desired function.   It only takes one device synced to the user’s home network or tablet, for example, and the cyber intruder has pierced through to take control, of say, the home alarm system while the user is at work or track the user's financial transactions.
Security of personal consumer information is a driving concern with the speed in which the technology and synchronization are actually taking place by way of cloud interface and communication.   Yet the path of the industry’s evolution should raise concern for the security of commercial garnered data as well.  The hopes of there being standards established are the NTIA’s expectation that IoT garnered data can be classified as consumer driven data and commercially driven data and how each should be protected.  Real-time commercial data monitoring is here with scalable means for connecting items to the Internet and the ability to monitor with analytics.  This will be an unexpected revelation amid the NTIA’s RPC results that will reveal the industry’s evolution embracing “IoT as a service” to the NTIA ultimately changing its paradigm.

Internet of Things as a service is the next generation of Cloud deployment and management involving interconnected network designers and device manufacturers whose input will be invaluable for logistics and policy NTIA considerations.  What underscores this imperative is the direction of software IoT development evolving to enhance platforms and application program interfaces “APIs”.  Together, the paradigm is certainly changing for all things considered magnifying the ability to connect devices and products to the Cloud.   And so with the speed and breadth of connectivity, the NTIA will recognize inevitable increasing vulnerabilities and liabilities, swimming in the “cyber security justice” pool along with standard setting government involvement in a wave of piercing litigation.


Lorenzo Law Firm is “Working to Protect your Business, Ideas, and Property on the Web."
Copyright 2016, all rights reserved Lorenzo Law Firm, P.A.

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