Speaking at the Broadband World Forum, Jim Hunter told the packed show floor that the real opportunity in the Internet is in connecting it with people; being able to put individual pieces of data about people’s lives into context to make it meaningful.
In his presentation, Hunter went on to warn the audience that while pieces of data in isolation might be harmless, once they’re put together and a picture is formed, the information gained could be dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands.
“If you look at a picture, it is made up of hundreds of thousands of pixels,” said Hunter. “Look at one pixel in isolation and you can’t identify what it’s for – it could be of anything from anywhere and it’s the same with data. A single snapshot of data is meaningless without context, but align a ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’ or ‘when’ and the picture starts to build. As you begin to gather more pixels or data you can see how individual pieces fit together, then gradually you build a story and gain insight. You have information.
“The IoT – or the IoY (Internet of You) – is about defining what those individual pixels are, which can build the stories which make sense. It’s then finding the part of the picture which gives the insight and information needed to provide a tailored personal service or solution. The caution, however, is around putting the right security measures in place to ensure this information cannot be used by the wrong people.”
As co-chair of the Privacy Security Committee on the IoT Consortium, a global group of companies helping to shape the public messaging about IoT, Hunter explained in his presentation how he is working to establish a minimum bar for understanding the importance of privacy and security when developing IoT products.
“Firstly we want to help companies do the right thing for the consumer and secondly, ensure there’s protection in place when things go wrong,” he continued. “Nothing should be available online without security measures in place. Too often for developers, security is sprinkled on top rather than baked in and that just isn’t good enough when you’re dealing with personal data.”
Hunter also outlined how the IoT is not a revolution, rather an evolution of compute and about exploring the opportunities which exist in the software we develop – how we make it personal.
Greenwave Systems is a global Internet of Things (IoT) software and services company.