Even if the acronym IoT isn’t in your lexicon, it’s most likely in your home and workplace. IoT, which stands for Internet of Things, is a network of tangible objects that are connected to the Internet using sensors, software or other technologies.
“Your new microwave that has internet Wi-Fi capability or your smart doorbell that has a camera and an app, those are some the things that part of the Internet of Things at home,” says David Wolf, vice president of Just Solutions, Inc., a provider of managed IT services with offices in Rochester and Buffalo. “People are using IoT all the time and don’t realize it.”
The origins of IoT date back to the 1960s, but its likeness to what it is today began taking shape in the early 1990s. The term was coined in 1999 by technologist Kevin Ashton, cofounder of the Auto-ID Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“My alma mater is Carnegie Mellon, and they had a Coca-Cola vending machine, which was one of the earliest machines with IoT incorporated into it,” said Ashique KhudaBukhsh, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Software Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology. “It had sensors that could tell how long the Coca-Cola had been inside the vending machine.”
That was in the early 1990s before KhudaBukhsh was a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon. He says it hasn’t been until much more recently that IoT has become mainstream due in part to affordability and advances in technology.
“The market is flourishing right now, but the underpinning technologies were already there,” KhudaBukhsh said. “It has started picking up because sensor technologies have started becoming cheaper. Things like smart watches, smart televisions and smart cars are happening because we can now build reliable, cheap and accurate sensors.”
KhudaBukhsh says IoT can not only be used for convenience — like assuring you always have a cold drink from a vending machine — but also for safety.
In May he will be part of a team, presenting a paper called Infrastructure Ombudsman: Mining Future Failure Concerns from Structural Disaster Response (Md Towhidul Absar Chowdhury, Soumyajit Datta, Naveen Sharma, Ashiqur R. KhudaBukhsh) at The Web Conference 2024 in Singapore, a yearly international conference dedicated to the future of the Web.
Spurred by the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse in Pittsburgh in 2022, the team created a groundbreaking infrastructure ombudsman tool that automatically detects concerns about potential structural failures from social media posts mined by AI.
While human response and AI power the tool, KhudaBukhsh points out there are also IoT tools that can help detect potential bridge and building collapses, such as concrete temperature and maturity sensors.
KhudaBukhsh is excited to think about a future where IoT, generative AI and the human element all work together for a safer society.
“Imagine a future where through our AI technologies we are getting information from people that are worried about the structural health of different bridges and buildings,” KhudaBukhsh said. “Suppose there are also IOT sensors in these structures. Then we have two sources of information to see whether that worry is valid or not and if it is, we channel the information to appropriate authorities.”
Craig Lamb, co-founder, co-owner and managing partner of Rochester-based Envative, believes that IoT will ultimately find its way into every industry if it’s not already there.
“There are lots of opportunities with IoT” says Lamb, who notes a key benefit for businesses is managing costs, like installing sensors on lights to improve energy efficiency. “IoT is really about reducing redundancy. It doesn’t replace the dynamic interface of people.”
For now, the company — which is dedicated to improving business efficiencies and reducing costs through process automation — sees manufacturing as its greatest client in the IoT arena.
“In manufacturing IoT is very important because the cost of labor is very expensive,” says Lamb, who notes other reasons IoT is beneficial in manufacturing include increased productivity and operating efficiency.
Envative also has IoT clients in the hotel and hospitality space, who have found benefits in using sensors for everything from checking and adjusting hallway temperatures to dispensing beverages hands-free.
Like all technologies, though, there are two sides to every coin, says Wolf. This includes IoT in all forms from consumer items like smart garage door openers and baby monitors to medical devices like hearing aids and heart rate monitors.
“Yes, they’re a convenience, but at the same time we’re putting a lot of personal information out there for other people to figure out ways to take advantage of,” Wolf said.
In a poorly designed network, Wolf explains that an IoT device can become a weak point or entry point for bad actors. Therefore, he recommends – especially for businesses – isolation separation.
He gives an example of an unnamed North American casino that was hacked several years ago when cybercriminals penetrated it and stole data via a fish tank that was connected to the Internet for remote temperature monitoring.
“They were able to hack in because the casino didn’t isolate the networks,” Wolf said. “You want to separate the IoT network from your point-of-sale accounting system and other places where there’s private information, like HR.”
He also recommends that whatever IoT devices you use, you check for and run software updates regularly because most of the time, the updates are patching and fixing security holes. Additionally, he recommends not using the same passwords for every device, making sure the passwords you use are complex, and using a password manager.
Caurie Putnam is a Rochester-area freelance writer.
n
Tyler Fields is your internet guru, delving into the latest trends, developments, and issues shaping the online world. With a focus on internet culture, cybersecurity, and emerging technologies, Tyler keeps readers informed about the dynamic landscape of the internet and its impact on our digital lives.
