Multimedia Traffic Security Architecture Essay | IOT Applications And Issues.

IOT Devices

Discuss About The Multimedia Traffic Security Architecture?

This is the world of Digitalization which new technologies re emerging constantly and making the life of consumer and Industry more convenient and easy. Internet of things is one such promising technology in which devices are internet enabled and communicate with each other based on artificial intelligence and analytics and are also capable for taking decisions.  This machine-to-machine communication without the intervention of human is used to automate routine tasks making life convenient (Stankovic, 2014). There are numerous devices that can interact with your mobile phone and can take decisions. There are coffees machines capable of interacting with your mobile phones and can prepare coffee as soon as you reach home based on your location. Such is the potential of this technology however there are lot of concerns about data security and privacy also which are acting as inhibitors for the growth of this technology. There is also lot of research carried out by business giants and technological leaders like Google, GE, Philips, Amazon, Cisco, and Samsung to sort out these issues. This report will discuss about the wide application fo IOT devices in our day to day life by focusing on some of the IOT enabled products that can be used in day to day life. Apart from this, this report also focuses on some of the most critical issues faced by this technology and how they can sort out.

IOT has been rising continuously in last few years. Today, most of the products are available with Internet enabled not only for Industry but also for the end customers. The IOT devices in my home setting can be discussed as:

1. Amazon echo

It is one of the earliest products in Internet of things with large applications. It becomes a huge hit among consumers. There are more than seventy hundred thousand reviews on Amazon about this product. One can play any music genre or particular track from Amazon music, Pandora, TuneIn,  Spotify just using your voice.

2. Keen home Air purification and Thermostat solutions

There is no need to setup the temperature using Keen solutions. It will automatically detect the optimal temperature based on the surroundings however you can change it. Also, there was one drawback in other similar systems where the house needs to be at the same temperature. Using this app, one can set the different temperatures for different rooms.

3. Water sprinkler for gardening

This is a very innovative product and has direct application in day-to-day life. When people go on holidays, they often wonder how they will water their plants and grass. This product is the ultimate water sprinkler controller that can be controlled form your mobile phone and even when you are not at your home, you can water the grass.

4. IOT microwave

Issues and solutions for IOT devices

These IOT enabled microwave are very convenient. They can be operated from mobile phone using the touch pad provided by the App and thus options like pre heating can be started when one is about to reach the home to save time. Also, it can take instructions from your voice and thus it is very handy. An

5. Security systems

There are security systems that can lock or unlock the doors or even cars without using keys and can save one from tension of carrying keys and thinking if they have locked or not locked their home properly. These locks can be controlled from the mobile app. Also, if guests are visiting your home, these systems will generate the key valid for guest visit’s duration, which can be shared with the guests

6. Lighting systems

It is often that people walk away from the room without switching off the lights. These smart lights have capable of detecting the occupants in the nearby area and can switch off themselves if no one is there. Also, if someone will walk in the room, they will automatically become on (Da Xu & He, 2014).

7. Smart TV

Imagine accessing a website or using social media using television. Yes, this is possible by smart TV that has built in internet and can connect to host of devices like Philips Hue lights, Phone, camera, Amazon echo and many more. They are capable of notifying you if any of their part needs replacement or working at sub-optimal levels. There are numerous products available in the market by vendors like Philips, Samsung, LG, Panasonic.

8. Coffee machine

Like Microwave, there are even coffee machines available in the market that can read the instructions directly from your mobile and you can give the instructions to keep a coffee ready by the time you reach home, these machines will talk to your location on the mobile phones and will keep your cup of coffee ready exactly when you reach home (Swan, 2012). It will also notify in case of shortage of any ingredient or whenever it needs maintenance or cleaning.

There are lots of issues in IOT devices that are delaying the active adoption of this technology. Someone drives the car to the beautiful place located quite far from the city and now wants to lock his car where there is no Internet. How the devices will be communicated in case of lack of Internet is also needs to solve before these IOT devices see huge revolution in lifestyle and become part of consumer culture. Some of the specific issues are as follows:

Security is the biggest issue in the IOT. With use of IOT, there have been so many entry nodes available in the network that makes the network much more vulnerable. Also, as the common man is not very tech savvy, they have no idea how to protect themselves and fall prey to the intruders (Ganti, Ye, & Lei, 2011). One of the reason for such insecure products in the market is the Organizations are in rush state and bringing products to the market to get first mover advantage without properly testing them. There should be a rule or policy that IT products should be secure enough and compliant to various parameters and only then should be use for public.

Currently, centralized client server mechanism is mostly used to authenticate and authorize devices to connect to different nodes in a network. This is fine as long as there are few devices but as per as the Gartner there will be more than 30 billion IOT devices by 2020 and thus centralized systems will become bottlenecks (Heer, et al., 2011). There are new models like Fog computing models, decentralized networks, block chains that are also the promising technology to handle such infrastructure issues (Roman, Zhou, & Lopez, 2013).

IOT is very fragmented industry with so many players and so many technologies competing against each other. There are issues due to lack of common technological standards, hardware standards, lack of standard protocols for machine to machine communication, lack of compatibility in embedded software and firmware between many devices (Babar, et al., 2010). With this rapid change, it is also possible that many of these players, new technologies, and new manufacturers of IOT device will go out of business in few years and will their device, technology work without support. Thus, it is important that all vendors should adopt common standards. It can also lead to a consortium situation where few players are collaborating and manufacture products compatible with each other and this will simply reduce the option for customers (Zhou, & Chao, 2011). For example, if LG says that their microwave will only connect with Nest and Keen products and then LG users are restricted to buy Samsung products.

As so much data is getting generated and shared among devices, there is a lack of transparency who is the owner of data generated and as a result, this data can be sold by vendors to the marketing companies or companies like Google can use their data as they are into business of target marketing and showing advertisements to the people (Want, Schilit, & Jenson, 2015). It would be correct to say that privacy issues are the most important issue that can exist in IOT infrastructure.

There are no easy solutions to the above issues. However, with technological advancements there are certain solutions. One of the solutions is to have an extra layer of user authentication. At the end of user, he or she must have an updated profile and the second layer of security can be added with the help of one time password on mobile (Drucker, 2015). Another solution is to keep all the applications updated and at the same time, user should have frequent scanning of the application. The antivirus system should be updated so that the latest viruses can be captured.  It is also suggested that users should create different profiles for different family members based on the need. For example, the Smart TV can have different profiles for parents and kids. It is also important that the users must also install the security patches for all the IOT devices. The security patches would ensure that the IOT infrastructure is not vulnerable to the external threats. The bottom line is that users must have a continuous eye on the safety of IOT devices (Gubbi & Buyya, 2013)

The diagrammatic representation of my dwelling can be shown as:

Conclusion

The above paper discusses the Internet of Things infrastructure in my dwelling. With the above discussion, it can be said that there are various benefits of Internet of Things. However, organizations and individuals must also think about the strategies to overcome the challenges. The challenges and the associated threat can be highlighted in a table as:

With the above discussion it can be said that the multiple solutions should be used to overcome the issues.  For example, use of antivirus system along with firewall would help the user to safeguard the IOT infrastructure.

References

Babar, S., Mahalle, P., Stango, A., Prasad, N., & Prasad, R. (2010). Proposed security model and threat taxonomy for the Internet of Things (IoT). Recent Trends in Network Security and Applications, 420-429.

Da Xu, L., He, W., & Li, S. (2014). Internet of things in industries: A survey. IEEE Transactions on industrial informatics, 10(4), 2233-2243.

Drucker, P. F. (2015). Internet of Things. European Commission Information Society and Media.

Ganti, R. K., Ye, F., & Lei, H. (2011). Mobile crowdsensing: current state and future challenges. IEEE Communications Magazine, 49(11).

Gubbi, J., Buyya, R., Marusic, S., & Palaniswami, M. (2013). Internet of Things (IoT): A vision, architectural elements, and future directions. Future generation computer systems, 29(7), 1645-1660.

Heer, T., Garcia-Morchon, O., Hummen, R., Keoh, S. L., Kumar, S. S., & Wehrle, K. (2011). Security Challenges in the IP-based Internet of Things. Wireless Personal Communications, 61(3), 527-542.

Roman, R., Zhou, J., & Lopez, J. (2013). On the features and challenges of security and privacy in distributed internet of things. Computer Networks, 57(10), 2266-2279.

Stankovic, J. A. (2014). Research directions for the internet of things. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 1(1), 3-9.

Swan, M. (2012). Sensor mania! the internet of things, wearable computing, objective metrics, and the quantified self 2.0. Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks, 1(3), 217-253.

Want, R., Schilit, B. N., & Jenson, S. (2015). Enabling the internet of things. Computer, 48(1), 28-35.

Zhou, L., & Chao, H. C. (2011). Multimedia traffic security architecture for the internet of things. IEEE Network, 25(3).