What happens when you get a panel of four executives together with an industry-leading journalist to discuss tradeoffs in IoT designs? After the obligatory introductions, Ed Sperling took this group into questions on power, performance, and integration.… Read More
Lethal data injection a much bigger threat
Watching a spirited debate on Twitter this morning between Tom Peters and some of his followers reminded me of the plot of many spy movies: silently killing an opponent with a lethal injection of some exotic, undetectable poison. We are building in enormous risks in more and more big data systems.… Read More
Establishing Principles for IoT Security
Much has been said about the potential of IoT. So much so, that it is has been featured at the peak of inflated expectations on Gartner’s hype cycle for quite some time. As the hype inevitably subsides, the reality of delivering the benefits of IoT grows, and the initial excitement turns to concern. Challenges around security and … Read More
Industry Analyst Perspectives On The Apple WWDC 2016 Keynote
I was in-person and live at Apple’s WWDC keynote in San Francisco. The following are my quick takeaways from the event.
Watch and watchOS:
Apple is focusing on exactly what they should be with watchOS, and that’s speed, ease of use and upping the ante in health and fitness. With the first Watch and watchOS, Apple solved many of the problems… Read More
SMART sensors with OTP memory for the IIoT
A few years back before IoT became the buzzword, the industrial automation community had already talking about “smart sensors” since the mid-1990s. The impetus for those discussions was IEEE 1451, a family of standards for adding intelligence and wireless communications to sensors so they could be incorporated into field networks.… Read More
Car Theft Making a Comeback
In the U.K., where vehicle theft has been in a steep decline for the past 20 years, the most widespread advice given by police to car owners is: keep your car keys in your freezer. The most common source of vulnerability these days is the interception of RF signals between keyfobs and cars. For a time, several years ago, there was a rash… Read More
Safety = Security?
Have you ever wondered what the difference is between safety and security? I would be surprised if you had unless you work in these areas as we tend to use the words interchangeably. Languages such as German, Norwegian and Spanish have one word to mean both – or so I am told by my associates who claim those languages as their mother… Read More
Safety Verification for Software
When automakers are thinking about the safety of an embedded system in a car, while it’s good to know the hardware has been comprehensively tested for safety-specific requirements, that isn’t much help if the software component of the system is not supplied with similarly robust guarantees.
The challenge is that the software … Read More
Android Auto-Rooting Malware – You Can Run But You Can’t Hide
There has been a startling rise in a class of Android auto-rooting malware which is believed to affect over a quarter of a million phones in the US and well over a million in each of India and China. The attack has primarily infected older versions of Android (so far) – KitKat, JellyBean and Lolipop primarily.
The malware, known as Shedun… Read More
IBM z13 Helps Avoid Costly Data Breaches
A global study sponsored by IBM and conducted by the Ponemon Institute found that the average cost of a data breach for companies surveyed has grown to $4 million, representing a 29 percent increase since 2013. With cybersecurity incidents continuing to increase with 64% more security incidents in 2015 than in 2014 the costs are… Read More
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