Internet Society Releases Internet of Things (IoT) Overview

Standards body wants standards for IoT. Vendors don’t care article tells that  the Internet Society (ISOC) has added its name to the growing list of groups concerned that insecurity and a cavalier attitude to privacy pose a risk to the Internet of Things (IoT). In a paper published last Friday, ISOC notes that individual threats and vulnerabilities are, in aggregate, what’s going to make-or-break the IoT as a whole. While users are identified as part of the problem, also many products are hopelessly insecure because vendors don’t bear the cost of insecurity. That falls on the Internet as a whole. The huge scale anticipated by IoT-boosters is far beyond that of computers or even the huge smartphone market, so I would hope that security gets done right this time.

To understand the opportunities and challenges associated with the Internet of Things, the Internet Society has released “The Internet of Things: An Overview – Understanding the Issues and Challenges of a More Connected World”, a whitepaper that examines many important aspects of the Internet of Things.

This paper is aimed to serve as an informational resource about the Internet of Things and a launching off point for further discussions. The paper begins with an overview of the technologies that enable the IoT and then explores the challenge of defining what the “Internet of Things” is. The largest portion of the paper presents five primary challenge areas:

security;
privacy;
interoperability and standards;
legal, regulatory, and rights; and
emerging economies and development.

ISOC document will point some details, but as almost always with Internet technologies we seem to face of their old complaint that standards efforts move too slowly. Instead of waiting for standards IoT device vendors appear to have collectively decided to ignore as many standards as they can. For example the preference for IPv4 over IPv6 seems to be short-sighted stupidity. The vendor clubs hoping to impose proprietary interfaces and communications on the IoT are also a threat not just to users but to the IoT as a whole, making it more expensive to develop standards, check interoperability, or ensure security.