Our lives depend on technology that is still fragile
At the end of May 2014, Ubisoft released a game called "Watch Dogs", the protagonist of the game is a smart A computer hacker, his niece was killed in a deliberately framed car accident, and the protagonist, in grief and anger, tried to find out the truth and seek revenge.
The protagonist can steal vehicles, hack pacemakers to assassinate people, and even affect city traffic lights. This concept may have sounded silly in the early 2000s, but if we are not careful enough with our implementation of the Internet of Things, we may end up living in such a reality. Not only does IoT have vulnerabilities in connected vehicles like the 2014 Jeep Cherokee, but it could also extend into connected medical devices like pacemakers and defibrillators. Self-driving cars have been known to be fooled even by simple visual tricks, such as changing the content of a stop sign so that the car interprets it as a speed limit sign. If we are not careful enough, our automation efforts will create more problems. IoT and privacy still don’t mix well. The promise IoT brings includes ushering in a new era of data collection. It has been part of the development process for devices used daily by businesses, and has largely succeeded in delivering on that promise. However, we forget about privacy. Since many devices that collect data also store data locally for remote access, they remain as vulnerable as a laptop left in a coffee shop
At the consumer level, we're seeing companies like Samsung Companies like this warn their customers not to leak any sensitive information near their connected devices, as someone could sniff the traffic and hear the conversation remotely as clearly as if they were there. The most obvious solution to this problem is to focus on protecting the data collected, while not losing sight of the importance of the data mining process. Upgrading is still a headache; the vast majority of IoT devices are not that complex. Typically, it's a printed circuit board plugged into a device that didn't exist many years ago. But what if the PCB becomes obsolete? Can you still update it? What should be the appropriate support lifecycle for the hardware? Because most IoT devices are not modular, you can’t swap out one piece of hardware like you can on a desktop computer into another piece of hardware. You'll often need to buy a brand new device,
just as your smartphone becomes obsolete. The lack of modular hardware means every piece of technology you buy has a limited shelf life, which you must take into account when calculating its return on investment. Once support ends for a particular piece of hardware, you're left behind and vulnerable to attacks. When a device is no longer supported, the longer you keep it, the more likely it is to be exploited by hackers trying to steal data from it. It's unlikely that most IoT devices will be modular (just because it's not feasible or aesthetically pleasing in some cases), but that doesn't mean we can't be better prepared for the hardware of the future and for those Support businesses that rely heavily on IoT. Summary; While all of this sounds like a bunch of "doom and gloom," it's important to note that IoT is still not a very mature technology. The good news is that manufacturers are well aware of all these issues and have been doing their best to resolve them. At some point, we can expect secure, future-proof, and privacy-oriented hardware that not only meets the needs of a convenience economy, but also its needs for enhanced technology.