Securing the entire IoT value will become critical in the future.
We have been hearing increasingly about how the Internet of Things (IoT) and data analytics are going to revolutionise the way different verticals operate and interestingly, these technologies are infiltrating our lives a lot more rapidly than we think.
By 2021, industry investment in IoT is predicted to go up to $1.1tn. Of course, as the use cases increase, the rate of security breaches will also go up. In fact, the number of unfilled cybersecurity jobs is expected to hit 3.5m by 2020. Those numbers were shared in Montreux last month at NAGRA’s annual media briefing, which usually takes place against the backdrop of the Montreux Jazz Festival, which the Kudelski Group has supported since the event launched in 1967.
The Swiss company’s role within security is fairly well documented, but its involvement in a cultural event that brings together music lovers from across the world, is perhaps less known.
To digress a bit, we had the pleasure of listening to renowned American musician Joan Baez sing to a packed audience at Stravinski Auditorium and were also treated to the behind-the-scenes production of the festival. The Kudelski Group has, over the years, extended a great deal of technical support to the festival and has played a seminal role in creating its high-resolution digital archive.
But coming back to IoT, Susanne Emonet, VP IoT of Business Strategy Group at NAGRA, related an incident in the US to emphasise the need to secure every part of the IoT ecosystem. A casino in the US had a fish tank with sensors connected to a PC to regulate its temperature, food and cleanliness. A clever hacker used the tank to gain entry into the casino and steal client data.
Securing the entire IoT value will become critical in the future. A media company’s capacity to deliver content to connected devices, and to gather and monetise data from them, will be hugely important in the IoT value chain – particularly in the consumer domain. NAGRA is already gearing up for an IoT world and has some interesting case studies around data analytics. I’m sure we will begin to hear more discussions around data analytics and IoT at IBC this year.
