The internet of things, or IoT, is a system of interconnected sensors and devices that are connected to the internet. This network of physical objects is able to collect and exchange data, making it possible for machines to communicate with each other and make our lives more convenient. With the help of IoT devices, organizations can monitor and control their assets remotely. 

As more and more sensors and devices are connected to the Internet of Things, we will continue to see new and innovative ways that these devices can be used to improve our lives. For example, an organization could use an IoT sensor to track the temperature of a warehouse full of perishable goods. By monitoring the data collected by the sensor in real time, the organization could take steps to prevent the goods from spoiling.

The IoT is transforming the way we live and work, and utilities are no exception. Dogtown Media works with a variety of companies to develop comprehensive IoT apps to better serve their customers. 

Utilities and the Internet of Things

The internet of things has the potential to transform the utility sector. By connecting devices and systems, utilities can gain a real-time view of their operations. This increased visibility can help to improve efficiency and identify issues before they cause problems. Additionally, the internet of things can enable new services such as demand response and smart grid applications.

Utilities can also use the data collected by IoT devices to improve planning and asset management. By understanding how their systems are being used, they can make more informed decisions about maintenance, upgrades, and new construction. In the future, the internet of things will become an increasingly important part of utility operations. By capitalizing on this technology, utilities can gain a competitive edge and improve their service delivery.

Potential Pitfalls

While this technology has the potential to completely change the way people live and work, there are also a number of potential problems that need to be considered. One worry is that as the IoT grows, the risk of cyberattacks will increase. 

Another concern is that the proliferation of sensors and data-gathering devices could infringe on our privacy rights. Finally, there is the possibility that malfunctioning sensors or incorrect data could lead to dangerous results. While the Internet of Things holds great promise, it is important to carefully consider these potential risks before moving forward. Dogtown Media helps companies consider all data privacy issues with our end-to-end iPhone app development service. 

Protecting Customer Data

In order to protect data, utilities must take steps to secure both their own systems and the devices that are connected to them. One way to do this is to encrypt data at all points of collection and storage. This makes it more difficult for unauthorized individuals to access the data and limits the damage that can be done if a breach does occur. 

Another important step is to limit access to data on a need-to-know basis. By carefully controlling who has access to which data, utilities can further reduce the risk of unauthorized access. Finally, it is essential to monitor systems continuously for signs of intrusion or unusual activity. By taking these precautions, utilities can help ensure that data remains secure when it is connected to the IoT.

Utility Internet of Things Phone Apps

Utility companies are beginning to develop phone applications that allow customers to monitor and manage their usage in real time. This capability not only helps to reduce waste and save money, but it also allows utilities to respond quickly to outages and other issues.

In addition, these apps can be used to track demand and optimize production, leading to a more efficient use of resources. As the IoT continues to evolve, it is likely that phone apps will play an increasingly important role in the utility industry, making it easier than ever for customers to stay informed and proactive about their energy usage.

Working with App Developers

A number of phone apps have been developed to help customers track and manage their utility usage. By partnering with app developers, utilities can ensure that their apps are constantly kept up-to-date with the latest technology. Additionally, app developers can bring a fresh perspective to the table, helping utilities to develop innovative new features that will improve the customer experience.

In a rapidly changing environment, it is important for utilities to stay ahead of the curve by collaborating with app developers. This type of collaboration between utility companies and app developers is important because it helps to ensure that customers have the tools they need to manage their energy use effectively. 

Speaking of being a top dog, we are proud to announce that we’ve been named one of the Top 100 companies on Clutch’s platform. According to their recent report, our performance and services in the market have managed to help us in securing a spot in this very lucrative list of amazing B2B companies. 

For those of you who are wondering, Clutch is an established platform in the heart of Washington, DC, committed to helping small, mid-market, and enterprise businesses identify and connect with the service providers they need to achieve their goals. 

Being featured as a leading developer on Clutch is truly a huge milestone for us. We couldn’t thank them and their team enough for making this award a reality. Lastly, we would like to extend our appreciation to our clients and partners for always believing in our team to deliver high-quality services and solutions for their businesses.

 “Clutch has been a great partner over the long-term, supporting technology developers like us to expand into new markets globally.” – Marc. Fischer , Co-founder and CEO

For more information about our services feel free to contact our team! We look forward to hearing from you.

A report by Markets and Markets predicts that the retail IoT market will reach $35.5 billion by 2025. Here are three ways IoT is already making waves behind the scenes in retail.

Image Recognition

Retail is a complex business with a lot of moving parts, and not all of those moving pieces involve customers directly. Many improvements that IoT offers affect the customer experience, but the customer won’t know the full extent of the role that technology played in getting their package delivered on time. For example, warehouses need to operate at maximum efficiency and output to promise customers a specific delivery date range.

But warehouse employees often become exhausted and start losing concentration after several hours of work, which causes errors and delays. With image recognition, businesses can increase employee output without interfering greatly in their workflows. For example, IoT-enabled image recognition devices use AI to identify any incorrect product placements, labeling, price tagging, and low stock issues.

Image recognition is also used to visualize the complete picture of work, allowing errors to be found in real-time and fixed before it impacts the business or customer.

Automation in Operations

Retailers can use IoT to track orders, manage delivery, keep an eye on their warehouse, and inventory items in real-time. Tracking assets helps reduce the cost and effort of manually tagging and moving them.

Automation can step in to take care of the hard work, but it won’t come without significant investment in emerging technologies like AI, augmented reality, beacons, digital signs, and more. IoT sensors and devices already exist to track assets for the purposes of automation, but they need to be added to an ecosystem that will allow them to perform at their highest potential.

Many companies have implemented beacons with a return on investment. Beacons can be used to track movements around the store, and the resulting data can be analyzed to understand how customers navigate around the store. You can also utilize beacons to send customers coupons and notifications about promotions based on their real-time location and past purchase behavior. Ultimately, when done with the right frequency, beacons can enhance the customer’s shopping experience and elevate the business’s brand image.

Order Fulfillment

Order fulfillment is a major part of the retail experience. It’s so important to e-commerce that companies like DHL, Alibaba, and Seattle-based Amazon invest massive amounts of budget into optimizing their inventory tracking and order fulfillment operations. With IoT, the complexity of pulling the correct item, packaging it up for shipping, generating the correct shipping label, and sending it off to the carrier no longer is prone to errors.

Employees often experience less physical injury, feel safer, and report more productivity when working alongside IoT technology. That alone is a great major benefit of IoT. When your employees are happy, your customers are happy.

IoT is also used in order fulfillment to provide a real-time look at inventory on the shelf. Kroger has been utilizing RFID tags, sensors, and IoT devices to create 2,000 smart shelves that accurately track inventory. Analysts at Kroger then analyze the best place for products, what products need replacement or refilling faster, and how product quality affects consumer behavior. This analysis is used across many Kroger stores, and it’s also used to directly impact the store that’s generating the data. The manager can be alerted to a wet floor or a fire that just started.

Kroger’s smart shelves also integrate with the Kroger app to send customers coupons and promotions when they’re in the right aisle. They utilize the app to highlight items on the customer’s Kroger app shopping list as they’re walking in the aisle. This is an improvement and idea that any retailer who sells a wide variety of items can employ to upgrade the customer experience.

It’s also extremely important that retailers prioritize their equipment when implementing IoT. IoT is a great technology that can help reduce equipment replacement and repair costs by tracking the performance of the equipment and identifying any anomalies in the data. By finding the issue faster, retailers can simply maintain their equipment, rather than allowing it to break down and cause multiple days’ worth of revenue loss.

Drones and GPS trackers are other technologies that can help retailers better take care of their costly equipment. For example, delivery vehicles can be tracked for wear and tear and mileage. After the vehicle has driven a set amount of miles, it should be serviced. This lifts the burden of tracking miles off of the driver, allowing them to focus on delivering the package to the correct address. IoT devices can also measure engine performance or listen for any sounds that seem abnormal.

The Next Generation of Shopping

IoT is a technology with immense potential if you know where to use it and how to use it. It provides end-to-end transparency into the supply chain, warehouses, inventory, logistics, and order fulfillment. IoT can even revive a dying retailer by offering a new unique value proposition for the customer. The future is bright for retail and e-commerce thanks to IoT.

More and more people are talking about the Internet of Things (IoT). It seems these days that IoT applications are everywhere changing people’s lives and how businesses and industries operate. But what is this promising, all-encompassing technology?

IoT is an emerging technology that will bring about a transformation in our cities, homes, and businesses, allowing us to operate smart cars that talk to each other, live in smart cities that reduce environmental impact, and automate business processes. Read on to learn about how IoT works, what it does to help us automate things, and how it’s already being used in real-life situations.

What’s IoT?

Today, the Internet connects us all to each other through social media and communications like instant messaging and email. But IoT takes this connection one step further by connecting devices and sensors together. In other words, your laptop may one day be connected to your thermostat, doorbell security system, and car.

IoT technology is a perfect fit when you might be thinking, “I wish I could start my car from my bathroom in the mornings so that it’s warmed up for my morning commute” or “I wish I could start the washer without getting up from the couch” or “My work could be done faster if I could automate these processes.”

When we talk about IoT, we are talking about connecting everything (yes, everything) to each other. That means we ultimately want to have a world that’s so connected that every device is connected to each other or to the Internet. As a result of this goal, many people become confused about the broadness of IoT, so let’s cover why it’s beneficial to connect devices and sensors to the Internet.

Why Is IoT Important?

Whenever something is connected to the Internet, it’s sending and/or receiving information. Have you ever checked out your Internet speeds to find an upload and download speed? That’s referring to the speed at which your Internet connection allows you to send and receive information or data. When we’re able to send and receive information, it can make our devices and applications smarter, allowing them to achieve more complexity without sacrificing quality or speed.

For example, smartphones can allow us to watch any video in the world. But the videos reside in “the cloud”, where your phone can ask permission to view it, and the cloud can stream it to your device. The smartness of the phone doesn’t rely on having a ton of data saved onto the device; it depends on its ability to communicate with another connected entity to receive information.

In IoT, you can put everything into one of three categories: first, sensors collect information and sent it to another device. Second, computers get the information and act on it (or save it to the cloud for later retrieval). Third, there are devices that accomplish both of these things by themselves. Connecting these three types of data transmitters can yield you an application for almost anything you can think of.

Data Transmission for Decision MakingSensors collect data over time, like motion, temperature, air quality, light, moisture, and nearly anything else you’d want to measure about an indoor or outdoor environment. When connected to the Internet, sensors send the information to another device or to the cloud. We can act upon this data depending on the conditions we set beforehand.

For example, agriculture is a great industry for IoT applications because farmers can collect data about nearly anything in the environment: weather, soil moisture, crop growth, and more. Using this data, the farmer can decide to forego watering his or her crops if a lot of rain is predicted in the next day. Sensors enabled machines to make sense of an environment.

Often, sensors can transmit this data in real-time or close to real-time, saving users a lot of time and effort. We already use real-time sensors to print out documents quickly, open our garage door upon clicking a button, and when scanning your library card to check out books.

Bringing Everything Together

When we use devices that can both collect and send data and then analyze it and act upon it, we are removing the need for a human to step in. For example, in farming, sensors are collecting information about the soil and other aspects of the environment. But instead of having the farmer keep an eye on all of the data so that he can manually turn on or off his irrigation system, we can directly connect the irrigation system to the sensors.

In fact, the irrigation system located in Ohio could be sending information to an analysis software being developed in New York City, and it would still take no effort from the farmer to ensure his crops get the best opportunity for high yield this year. Keeping up with this system for years can build historical data, allowing a computer program to optimize the performance of the farm equipment for the largest, juiciest crop yield and minimize any losses.

This is an example of just the soil moisture sensor and irrigation equipment. Imagine what else can be optimized when sensors are collecting information about temperature, light, air quality, and more. Algorithms work best with multi-dimensional data, so more data is always better for automation.

IoT Is Technology For a Brighter Tomorrow

IoT is all about connecting humans together better by connecting devices and sensors to computers and cloud services. This allows us to continuously automate, optimize, and improve our lives and businesses without a lot of human input. The world is going to work drastically differently in the next few decades, and it’s all possible because of IoT.

For senior citizens who were able to quarantine alone or live alone throughout the pandemic, technology has taken over many aspects of senior care so that nurses and family can safely ensure their patient and loved one is staying healthy and well. Internet of Things (IoT) applications like fall detection and alert devices, behavioral monitoring sensors, and malnutrition and dehydration trackers have worked tirelessly to support caregivers and elders alike during the pandemic. The hope is that these devices will identify signs of a larger issue so that it can be stopped before becoming serious enough to require hospitalization.

Fall Detection Devices

In elderly populations, falls are a major concern. Falls become more common with age and are the second leading cause of unintentional or accidental deaths worldwide. Thus, it is important to control as much as we can for falls both at home and in senior care facilities.

IoT technology can help caregivers prevent, predict, and detect falls by helping them record falls, pinpoint risk factors in the environment and the individual, and learn preventative and corrective measures. Conventionally, fall-detection technologies have used devices that the elderly person carries or wears. When the patient falls, they have to press the button on the device. This solution is great if your loved one is living across the country in Los Angeles while you’re in Atlanta.

But this method doesn’t account for patients that didn’t fall but don’t feel well enough to get up or for patients who haven’t been feeling normal recently. IoT can detect changes in the patient’s wellbeing by monitoring for discomfort and wellness. IoT sensors can help caregivers track their patients’ progress for days or weeks at a time and compare metrics to see if their patient’s health is declining, which is a risk factor for falling. This can support caregivers to act earlier and provide more care to make up for the senior’s deteriorating wellbeing.

Staying Home Longer

Research shows there may be a link between moving out of the home and into a senior care facility and dying earlier. For many elderly patients, it’s important for them to stay somewhere familiar and accessible to their families. IoT can help families remotely keep an eye on their senior family member by sending daily information about the patient’s health and wellbeing without any action necessary from the senior. When used with tele-assistance services, IoT technology really shines for seniors.

Companies like Vitalbase and SeniorAdom are working on remote assistance technology using IoT systems. Their tools include geolocation pendants, motion detection sensors, and wrist band devices. This hardware is supposed to automatically detect changes in behavior, motion, physical strength, and cognition.

By anticipating risks, sending early notifications to family and caregivers, and acting quickly in an emergency, these companies are making it possible to protect our seniors without expending more money, time, and effort. For example, SeniorAdom uses a self-learning algorithm and a smart box connected wirelessly to sensors in the senior’s home. With these devices and software, the company can detect abnormal situations or critical problems and send a warning to relatives and caregivers. SeniorAdom also uses motion sensors and door sensors to create a general daily schedule of the senior so that abnormalities are more obvious when they occur.

A Look at the Sensor Technology

These IoT-enabled sensors work on an 0G network which is used to send small amounts of data over a larger distance. They don’t pick up any personal or private information while they detect differences from the baseline conditions and movements. 0G devices also utilize low amounts of energy, making the overall cost a lot lower for the family.

For devices that run on other networks like cellular devices, it’s possible to utilize 0G as a backup network to ensure a stable connection for around-the-clock supervision and emergency communication. Vitalbases’s Vibby OAK is an automatic fall detection device worn on the senior’s neck or wrist. It connects to a cellular device (like a smartphone) but uses a 0G network when the cellular connection is unstable or unreachable. At healthcare and senior living facilities, devices operating on the 0G network can communicate with existing nursing call systems to keep medical staff updated in the event of an emergency.

More Autonomous Living

Many seniors want to continue an independent, autonomous, and healthy lifestyle. By outfitting their home and body with several devices and sensors in an IoT system, it’s possible for relatives and caregivers to remain vigilant, proactive, and connected without having to ask their seniors to leave home for good.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is extremely vast and encompasses millions of devices. By 2025, the number of IoT devices is projected to grow to 25.1 billion, according to the GSM Association. The rapid growth and expansion of IoT have cybersecurity experts worried about built-in security vulnerabilities and devices that stop getting updated at some point.

Security researchers are warning that history could be repeated if IoT developers don’t take care of a known Windows security issue that’s decades old. The vulnerability can be leveraged to manipulate millions of IoT and operational technology (OT) devices and even create a large-scale DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack across devices at multiple companies.

9 Issues To Be Aware Of

Security researchers at Forescout Research Lab have found and dug into security vulnerabilities in some TCP/IP stacks (internet protocols). They’ve named the nine new issues “Number:Jack”. The research lab has already been researching vulnerabilities in TCP/IP stacks and strategizing how to mitigate them as part of an initiative called Project MemoriaThe latest security issues stem from a foundational part of TCP communication within embedded devices, specifically the generation of the Initial Sequence Number (ISN). ISNs work to ensure every TCP connection between two computers or connected devices is unique so that third parties can’t intercept or manipulate the machine-to-machine connection. To ensure the connection is unique, ISNs are randomly generated so that the ISN isn’t predictable or known in order to take advantage of it for hacking, hijacking, or spoofing.

These are network security fundamentals that have been known and studied for decades, but the researchers found that this simple concept wasn’t executed correctly in IoT devices. The ISN is not generated randomly, and it can create patterns that create vulnerabilities for the unique machine-to-machine connection. Daniel dos Santos, a research manager at Forescout, says that Windows, Linux, and IT departments have mostly fixed these vulnerabilities, but IoT is lagging way behind.

Immense Potential for Malicious Intent

By making the TCP connections more predictable, hackers could close the connection ahead of time, creating a denial-of-service attack by preventing data transfer between the two devices. They could also just hijack the connection and add their own data into the transfer, while actively downloading sensitive information, adding file downloads as malware, or using HTTP responses to send the victim machine to a website with malware.

According to dos Santos, “It’s not difficult for us or an attacker to find this type of vulnerability because you can clearly see the way the numbers are generated by the stack is predictable.” Using these predictable connection ISNs, attackers could take things a step further and bypass authentication protocols to gain access to additional networks. For their part, Forescout disclosed the known vulnerabilities to relevant maintainers and vendors of TCP/IP stacks in October 2020.

The Attack Spread

The affected TCP/IP stacks were also found in several open-source stacks that were analyzed by Forescout. These included uIP, Nut/Net, picoTCP, FNET, cycloneTCP, and uC/TCP-IP. Additionally, the vulnerabilities were found in enterprise-level solutions like Dallas-based Texas Instruments’ NDKTCPIP, Siemens’ Nucleus NET, and Microchip’s MPLAB Net.

While the majority of vendors subsequently patched their devices with security software (or are in the middle of patching), one vendor hasn’t responded to Forescout’s report. Forescout didn’t release the name of the company. However, Forescout did say that devices at risk of cybersecurity attacks include medical devices, storage systems, and wind turbine monitoring systems are chief among the devices vulnerable to the TCP/IP stack issue. Dos Santos says that Forescout looked across multiple TCP stacks because it shows that IoT security is repeating IT history again across several stacks. Most importantly, Forescout wants people to critically look at what happened before and how such an attack could affect their IoT system and devices. Everyone should do this, “all down the IoT supply chain,” according to dos Santos.

Forescout did not publicly release information on the exact devices for each of the vulnerable nine stacks so that their manufacturer and end-user can remain protected until security patches are issued. In the meantime, Forescout released open-source software to help companies with IoT devices identify any stacks that may be vulnerable according to the research done as part of Project Memoria.

The company recommends issuing security patches if a vulnerability is detected so that attackers are prevented from gaining access into the device and/or network. If a vulnerability is found and it’s not possible to patch the IoT or OT device, Forescout recommended moving the vulnerable devices onto a segment of the network that reduces the risk of an attack or compromise.

Securing All IoT Systems Is a Must

IoT is reaching new heights as an emerging technology, but it would fare better if it took security lessons from a variety of fields, like IT, operating systems, and networking. To fail a test of fundamental network security likely means there are many more basic security issues brewing inside IoT and OT devices.

dos Santos added, “The foundations of IoT are vulnerable and not just for one vendor or specific device – it’s across several types of devices and the software components used in these devices. It’s often that they share similar types of vulnerabilities.” We cannot allow more large-scale DDoS attacks to occur, especially when they could’ve been avoided in the first place.

IoT devices interact with our environment. They observe, analyze, and understand our surroundings in real-time, and they transform this information into useful data and actions for human comfort. As IoT continues to grow and expand, IoT mobile app development will become increasingly popular because mobile allows for flexibility when transmitting data and due to the ease of developing mobile apps. And as we see the roll-out of 5G across public areas and even within our cars, mobile apps will become nearly essential.

Here’s what we know to be the benefits and challenges of IoT app development, and we’ll also cover how IoT impacts mobile app development.

The Benefits

Mobile apps allow consumers to check-in and make changes on the go. Thus, mobile apps afford accessibility for consumers, letting them access any connected device from anywhere in the world with their mobile phones. Because of this flexibility, you should seek out an IoT app developer who will factor scalability and increased bandwidth into your device’s mobile app.

Because IoT generates so much data, it enables companies to reach insightful conclusions. Most IoT devices collect data in real-time, which opens up many opportunities to enrich your customer experience, optimize your products, adjust your marketing strategy, and improve business operations. The possibilities are limitless in how data can impact your business and how your customers view your products.

For companies who are willing to risk the initial investment cost, IoT often returns much more on the investment over time. Because of the uncertainties in how to apply IoT to a business and the upfront costs involved, many businesses will not mess with an emerging technology like IoT until they’re more convinced of its benefits. As a result, companies who do make the leap gain a competitive edge over their peers.

We expect to see these benefits become entrenched in IoT development as time marches on.

The Challenges

As with anything worth doing, there are challenges abound when implementing IoT technology. One of these is data collection and processing. Because IoT generates so much data every hour, companies need adequate storage capacity, whether that’s physically or on the cloud. With so much data, it’s impossible to know what questions can be answered and how to best utilize the data for maximum return on investment. This may require hiring data analysts and data scientists with knowledge of machine learning, which is another cost.

IoT is notorious for its security and privacy issues. The nature of interconnected devices leaves IoT systems open to hacking and cybersecurity attacks. For example, in 2016, the Dyn cyberattacks affected users in Europe and North America, as it took down popular websites like Amazon, HBO, Esty, and San Francisco-headquartered Airbnb in addition to hosting providers like HostGator, Github, Imgur, and Squarespace. At Dogtown Media, application cybersecurity is one of our top priorities from the beginning of the project to the middle and the end.

IoT systems that interface with mobile apps require a balance of hardware and software. As a result, both need to be working in tandem such that updating one doesn’t cause the other to crash. The two need to be linked closely and with regard for the future to ensure the best performance, the least amount of software patching, and a regular update schedule.

IoT’s Impact on App Development

IoT systems offer a lot for mobile app development. One of these benefits is the lowered cost for developing a mobile app: because IoT already is made up of multiple integrations including emerging technologies like machine learning, AR, and VR, adding a mobile app into the mix won’t take much time. And due to the data-heavy nature of IoT, it won’t take a lot of work to find the right data for the mobile app.

IoT also opens the door for more interactivity and personalization in mobile apps. Apps can allow users to control multiple devices and get information on their uptime and performance. Businesses can also use mobile apps to optimize internal operations by allowing employees to keep an eye on machinery and equipment, data generation, and device relationships. Some companies even use IoT-connected mobile apps to reorder office supplies and schedule in-office repairs automatically when needed.

IoT’s ability to connect devices from all over the world into a single system affords it location independence. This works nicely with mobile apps which also tout location independence as a major benefit. This connecting feature has introduced IoT into homes and cars, allowing us to change the thermostat from the driveway or shut all blinds from the office. It also lets us see who’s at the door even when we’re at the grocery store.

IoT Is a Fundamental Part of the Mobile Future

We know IoT will be a major part of the future, but IoT-connected mobile apps will be present alongside IoT systems as well. IoT mobile apps give companies stronger relationships with their customers, higher decision-making power, more ways to optimize business processes, and a way to keep employees engaged. If your company is looking to level up its business value and reach more customers, consider developing a mobile app for your IoT system.

In this post, we’ll cover what exactly Industrial IoT (IIoT) is, how you can implement IIoT to work seamlessly with your existing infrastructure, and what it can do for the industry’s exiting maintenance workforce.

Industrial IoT

The IIoT involves the same things as an IoT system (connectivity between devices and sensors to the cloud and IoT software) but it also adds another layer of complexity. By connecting machinery, computers, and people into the system, IIoT applications use advanced data analytics to optimize industrial operations. IIoT systems can be applied to any facility, especially if they’re experiencing more downtime than revenues allow. With IIoT, maintenance personnel and the maintenance budget can work more efficiently to combat losses in revenue and product quality.

Using IIoT to Augment Your Assets

It’s important to take a look at your current assets and operational workflows to get a baseline idea of what can be optimized and fixed with an IIoT application. IIoT applications work best when they’re targeting specific problems and workflows, rather than being a one-size-fits-all solution that tries to fix everything. An IIoT expert can help you analyze your current infrastructure and devices as well as pinpoint how an IIoT solution can work alongside existing assets while complementing maintenance plans that are already in place.

Look for an IIoT firm that offers the latest technology and has a proven record of helping incoming employees train on information that could be lost by employee turnover. Craig Resneck is VP of Consulting at Boston-based ARC Advisory Group, a leader in technology research and advisory role for the IIoT industry. According to Resnick, in the process industries, the average impact of unplanned downtime is around $20 billion, which accounts for about 5% of the annual production of these companies. IIoT is a great tool to automate maintenance to minimize unplanned downtime and maximize the return on automation assets. Reliability experts say that unplanned downtime costs companies 10 times as much as planned downtime for maintenance.

Although IIoT can fix a lot of problems your company might be facing, it’s important to know that IIoT technology is not a good investment if it doesn’t enhance the value of your current machinery and equipment. On the other hand, there are many companies that haven’t considered IIoT-enhanced predictive maintenance or haven’t found a viable solution and are still able to combat unplanned downtime using other methods and tools. By maintaining their equipment more frequently and having replacement parts on hand, these companies are fighting downtime risk in a suboptimal way that costs a lot in the way of maintenance and parts.

IIoT technology can bring a balance to situations where companies are fearful of the next machine break-down, giving companies a tolerable target for downtime. Think of IIoT as augmenting your company’s existing machinery assets and optimizing your maintenance budget with predictive maintenance and minimal unplanned downtime. Seek out a predictive maintenance firm if you think your company would benefit greatly from a combination of computing technology, sensors, and IIoT to leverage your maintenance dollars in an optimal way.

Finding New Talent

In the past three decades, industrial facilities have become much more complex and technologically enhanced. Manufacturing facilities now work 24/7, and their equipment is at a high risk of breakdown due to the increased stress on the machinery. Employees also are at risk of becoming burned out and unhappy with their jobs.

While the demand for equipment uptime has increased enormously, the availability of skilled maintenance personnel that knows how to keep machinery working and running 24/7 has decreased considerably. Those that do have the experience to maintain equipment under strenuous conditions are older and reaching retirement age. But there is a massive shortage of skilled workers that can replace the older, more experienced maintenance workforce. College graduates have shifted into pursuing more innovative roles, rather than seek employment that involves equipment and hardware maintenance.

With the increasing popularity of IIoT technology, we need to fill the void of the exiting maintenance workforce and lower numbers of new, trainable employees with sensors and computing technology that can help companies achieve a tolerable downtime risk. Using IIoT, companies can get an hourly report on machinery efficiency and output which can help identify anomalies faster. This can augment routine maintenance and lower the impact of downtime on the company’s bottom line.

IIoT and Beyond

IIoT is a flexible and highly impactful technology that can be used to fix a multitude of problems and issues within a company. No one should be able to say that they tried implementing IIoT technology and it didn’t work. Without the correct guidance from experts and experienced professionals, IIoT can’t provide the maximum return on investment or find immediate value in your business. If you’re going to give IIoT a shot, make sure you’re optimizing its chance for success.

How will enterprises that utilize IoT applications adapt to the world when the pandemic ends? Although many companies that have survived the pandemic became more resilient over the past nine months, the pandemic has created everlasting effects on IoT development. Here are some of the ways IoT has grown in 2020.

Upgrading IoT Technology

Industrial IoT (IIoT) networks are robust, scalable, and expansive. They require a large amount of setup and testing, and since the pandemic reduced the ability for engineers to visit IIoT network sites physically, IIoT roll-outs have been limited during the past nine months. One solution is to implement more cellular IIoT devices. These only need a small amount of connectivity to the main network, and, for this reason, they’re growing in popularity. According to Juniper Research, a technology market research firm located an hour and a half outside of London, the number of cellular IoT devices is expected to reach 1 billion by 2024, a significant rise from 320 million in 2020.

For devices that have traditional SIMs, the implementation process is carried out at the device’s physical location. Engineers often use Remote SIM Provisioning (RSP) to enable setup to occur before the implementation of the device. Using RSP, the device can be connected to the location’s network without a lot of physical interaction required. This process reduces the demand for specialized engineers and new frameworks, even for devices that are connected but spread out across a large area. During the pandemic, RSP has been invaluable for rolling out new devices within IoT and IIoT systems.

The advent of the embedded SIM (eSIM) has also brought about the need for new frameworks for cellular IoT devices. The framework differs depending on the requirements of the IoT system in the industrial, enterprise, and consumer markets. Speaking of new frameworks, hardware manufacturers are now creating connected devices with no built-in user interfaces, which creates the need for special tools and management platforms for faster deployment and remote management.

Both the RSP and eSIM technologies weren’t very popular before the pandemic, but COVID-19 has accelerated the learning curve required to implement these technologies. IoT-enabled companies placed a higher emphasis on the benefits of IoT connectivity, so users and engineers had to adapt accordingly, while still following stay-at-home orders.

Post-Pandemic Cellular IoT

Although cellular IoT devices have been implemented throughout the pandemic, it’s been at a much lower rate than usual. As a result, enterprises have turned to technologies like RSP, even though it wasn’t used as frequently before and requires a bit of a learning curve. eSIM has been a great technology that circumvents long-term connectivity contracts with a sole operator. The more IoT systems with eSIMs, the more fair pricing and flexibility offered in connectivity contracts.

To take full advantage of the benefits of eSIM technology, you can take some actionable steps. For example, you can migrate a remote provisioning software to a centralized online platform for multiple stakeholders to access. Because networks can connect thousands of devices together, remote monitoring allows updates to be rolled out in a timely manner and network management by several parties.

Another way to exploit the benefits of eSIM is to create a seamless and integrated way to verify and authenticate connections using remote management services. In early IoT systems, proprietary authentication services were not able to scale as the enterprise and IoT system grew, leaving devices vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks.

Enterprises should also think about utilizing devices solely based on cellular IoT standards. As the scale and number of IoT systems increases, IoT devices should be able to play nicely with a growing system and scale accordingly. By thinking of these small details now, IoT architects can ensure the devices remain within protocol, management, and interoperation.

Lastly, IoT systems will continue to require a reliable and secure connection, and as cellular networks get leveraged for IoT systems, we’ll see more and more devices connect into an IoT network. Comprehensive solutions that can manage the scaling, implementation, and connectivity of growing systems will greatly increase in demand. Thus, it’s imperative for companies to optimize their IoT systems at all levels, from device to network to applications.

Reducing Effects of the Pandemic with IoT

Even for global IoT deployments, eSIMs are a smart choice: they offer scalability and flexibility like remote services for programming devices over-the-air, complete connectivity with options for various countries of deployment, multinational SIMs, and local profiles. Experts say that the pandemic is going to provide many learning opportunities for companies and engineers who operate in and utilize the cellular IoT market. There is an ongoing and strong need for all stakeholders within the ecosystem to collaborate closely so that these technologies can be maximized for efficiency, productivity, and potential.

IoT Systems Post-Pandemic

The pandemic has accelerated digitization across nearly every industry, and this effect is expected to be a long-lasting one. IoT, in particular, has seen rapid innovation in unexpected verticals, as well as a transformation of cellular IoT technology. As we move out of the pandemic, experts predict that IoT will continue to bring new advancements to a multitude of industries, especially healthcare, smart cities, and agriculture.

DDoS attackers are growing their botnet size (refers to the number of attacked devices that generate DDoS traffic) and with IT downtime costing companies from $300,000 to over $1,000,000 per hour, it’s important to see how a DDoS attack could reach your website or online service in the first place. Let’s look at the top five most damaging and notable DDoS attacks of all time.

2012: The Six Banks Attack

In mid-March of 2013, six major U.S. banks were the targeted victims of a wave of DDoS attacks. The attacks utilized hundreds of compromised servers using a botnet called Brobot. The attack hit at more than 60 gigabits per second. The banks that were affected were JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, PNC Bank, and U.S. Bank.

In 2012, DDoS attacks were still pretty unknown, but attackers had a variety of DDoS attack strategies in their toolbelts. While the banks had protection against several different types of DDoS attacks, the attackers rained down a large variety of attack types on the banks until they found one that worked. What’s most interesting about this incident is that the military wing of the Palestinian Hamas organization, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, took credit for the attack. The banks, however, had incredible amounts of lost revenue, expenses in mitigation, loss in brand and image trustworthiness, and customer service issues.

2016: The MiraiKrebs and OVH Attacks

In mid-September of 2016, cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs’ blog was attacked with a hit of over 620 gigabits per second, much bigger than the attack on the banks. At the time, it was the largest DDoS attack ever recorded. Krebs had personally recorded almost 270 DDoS attacks since July 2012, but this was the largest attack he (or the Internet) had ever seen. The attack was carried out by the Mirai botnet which eventually compromised over 600,000 Internet of Things (IoT) applications and devices, like home routers, IP cameras, and video players. Although the Mirai botnet had been found in August, Krebs’ blog was its first major attack.

A few days after attacking Krebs’ blog, the Mirai botnet was used against OVH, one of Europe’s largest hosting companies, which hosts around 18 million websites and applications for over one million customers. The attack occurred on an unnamed OVH customer using about 145,000 bots, which created a hit of up to 1.1 terabits per second. It lasted seven days and marked the beginning of the growth of major, sophisticated, focused, and large-scale DDoS attacks.

2016: The MiraiDyn Attack

A few days after the OVH attack, a self-proclaimed author of the Mirai botnet released the source code as open-source software on hacker forums. This opened the doors for even amateur hackers to replicate the code and add mutations to it to make it unique and undetectable.

Less than one month later, in late October of 2016, Dyn, a Domain Name Service provider, was hit with an attack at one terabit per second. It set the record for the largest DDoS attack at that time. Some experts say that the attack reached up to 1.5 terabits per second. It affected large companies that utilized Dyn, like HBO, Github, Reddit, Twitter, PayPal, Airbnb, and Netflix, and made them inaccessible. Dyn later said that they saw “10s of millions of discrete IP addresses associated with the Mirai botnet” during the attack.

2018: The GitHub Attack

In late February of 2018, GitHub, a San Francisco-based platform used by software developers to share their code repositories, was hit with a DDoS attack lasting 20 minutes. The attack hit at 1.35 terabits per second, enough to take down even the most sophisticated of servers. GitHub later said they traced the traffic back to more than “a thousand different autonomous systems… across tens of thousands of unique endpoints.”

Although GitHub had strong protections in place, they could have never predicted the sheer size of the attack and thus didn’t have enough resources or server space to handle it. This attack is known for its scale and size, as well as famous for using Memcached, a popular database caching system that websites and networks use for speed optimization. The Memcached DDoS attack uses a standard command and supplies an amplification factor of up to 51,200 times.

2020: The AWS Attack

In February of 2020, Amazon Web Services was hit by the most extreme DDoS attack in recent history. It used a method called Connectionless Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (CLDAP) Reflection to target an unnamed AWS customer, similar to the OVH hosting attack in 2016. The technique identifies vulnerable third-party CLDAP servers and amplifies how much data is sent to the victim’s IP address by up to 70 times. The attack hit at 2.3 terabytes per second and lasted for three days. Surprisingly, experts say that the attack was much less severe than it could have been and that the customers of the AWS platform could’ve lost more revenue and sustained more brand damage.

The New Reality

The first DDoS attack happened in 1996 to Panix, an internet service provider, using a method called SYN flood. Since then, this technique has become a “classic” DDoS attack strategy for the growing number of attacks. Cisco forecasts that DDoS attack numbers will double from 2018 (7.9 million) to 2023 (over 15 million). And it’s becoming more difficult to deal with the sheer size of the attacks, especially since they’re using thousands or millions of devices; even a company like Amazon can’t handle the size, length, and frequency of DDoS attacks these days.

What’s the DDoS attack you remember most? Let us know in the comments below!