During the last year we have been paying a special attention to the Internet of Things. While there are many great things coming from the Internet of Things innovation, there are a lot of concerns regarding people’s lives and privacy. A lot has been said lately about how vulnerable we are becoming to identity theft and how many HTTP servers are risking to get hacked. It is very easy for anyone with bad intentions to cause a lot of harm just to go their way and earn from it. Internet of things is making these kind of people stronger giving them new ‘tools’ to use.
Based on a survey of 779 senior business leaders from 19 different industries around the world, a report by The Economist concluded that 75% of businesses are already using and exploring the field of the Internet of Things. According to technology market intelligence company ABI Research, there are more than 10 billion wirelessly connected devices in the market today and that number is expected to reach 30 billion wirelessly connected devices by 2020.
Some of the Internet of Things’ privacy threats include illegal monitoring, private life invasion and data profiling. Nevertheless we have seen during the past few months a raise of interest in IoT. Codenvy teamed up with Samsung to further develop IoT, Greenwave expanded its IoT services, LambdaNative as well expanded its functional programming to IoT, and so on. It is clear that IoT is not just becoming the next big thing, it is taking over so many things and is being pushed to the edge as much as possible.
We must also mention that during the Microsoft Build 2016 conference, which took place at The Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA from March 30 – April 1, 2016 several innovations including the Internet of Things were presented, while a special attention was given to IoT at the world’s leading event for digitization CeBIT 2016 which was held in Hannover, from March 14 – 18.
This year CeBIT features over 500 digitization and IoT examples. As Frese put it, CeBIT “brought the Internet of Things to life and made it touchable.” The majority of attendees had plenty of discussions over the future of Internet of Things. According to Oliver Frese, member of the managing board at Deutsche Messe AG., it is possible that in the near future, “more than 50 billion objects will likely be connected with the Internet, with 90 percent of added value being created in the B2B sector.”
So as we can see a lot has been done, and a lot will be done in the future. The Internet of Things is and will make everyone’s lives easier, nevertheless the new technology has already started to bring privacy threats and if not balanced, the Internet of Things may become an invader of everyone’s private life. A report published by the U.S. National Intelligence Council in 2008 stated that it would be very difficult in the near future to prevent “access to networks of sensors and remotely controlled objects by enemies of the United States, criminals, and mischief makers.”
According to International Data Corporation (IDC), ‘the Internet of Things connectivity drive will create a market worth up to $8.9 trillion by 2020.’ With such fast growning premises, the Internet of Things should be regulated in a way that it keeps developing more and more in the future without threatening people’s lives and their privacy.
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