Hackable Homes

Is your house vulnerable?  Imagine coming home, disarming the alarm system, unlocking your doors and walking into a ransacked dwelling.  There are no broken windows, no forced entry, no compromised doggie doors and really no indication that an intruder had entered.  Welcome to your connected home.  I stop short of calling it a 'smart' home since it's not yet intelligent enough to keep the bad guys out.  From smartphone controlled front door locks to electrical outlets to security cameras to ovens, refrigerators and coffee machines, internet connected household objects are making their way into our homes.  Our TVs, DVDs and DVRs are already.  And anything connected to the internet, as we all know, is a potential target to be compromised.

Researchers have shown how easy it is to infect automobiles and it is only a matter of time before crooks and a little bit of code will be able to watch you leave your driveway, disable your alarms, unlock your door, steal your valuables and get out with minimal trace.  Those CSI/NCIS/Criminal Minds/L&O crime dramas will need to come up with some new ideas on how to solve the mystery during the trace-evidence musical montages.  The hard-nosed old timer is baffled by the fact that there is nothing to indicate a break-in except for missing items.  Is the victim lying for insurance fraud?  Could it have been a family member?  Or simply a raccoon?  A real who-done-it!  Until, of course, the geeky lab technician emerges from their lair with a laptop showing how the hacker remotely controlled the entire event.  'Look Boss, zeros and ones!'

Many of these remotely controlled home devices use a wireless communications protocol called Z-Wave.  It's a low power radio wave that allows home devices to communicate with each other and be controlled remotely over the internet.  Last year, 1.5 million home automation products were sold in the US and that is expected to grow to 8 million in less than 5 years.  An estimated 5 million Z-Wave devices will be shipped this year. 

Like any communications protocol, riff-raff will attempt to break it, intercept it and maliciously control it.  And as the rush to get these connected devices in consumer's hands and homes grows, security protections may lag.  I often convey that the hacks of the future just might involve your refrigerator.  Someone takes out all the internet enabled fridges on the West Coast and there is a food spoilage surge since no one owns legacy fridges any more....let alone Styrofoam coolers.   

ps

Related:

• 'Smart homes' are vulnerable, say hackers
• The five scariest hacks we saw last week
• From Car Jacking to Car Hacking
• The Prosecution Calls Your Smartphone to the Stand
• Mobile Threats Rise 261% in Perspective
• Q. The Safest Mobile Device? A. Depends
• Holiday Shopping SmartPhone Style
• SmartTV, Smartphones and Fill-in-the-Blank Employees

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Smart Cities – From IDC Directions 2010

ATT showed up at my door yesterday explaining that they are pulling all the copper (as he pointed up at the telephone pole) and replacing it with fiber to the home.  It’s fun watching these young sales guys go for the immediate assumptive close with, ‘You’re one of the lucky ones and now your phone, internet and cable will be going over fiber – which package best suits you?’  I’m not one of those ‘triple-play’ fans but the whole ‘fiber to the home’ reminded me of a presentation I saw last week at the IDC Directions 2010 in San Jose: Smart Cities: Proving Ground for the Intelligent Economy from Rick Nicholson, VP Research, IDC Energy Insights.  There are two big mega trends, as he put it, to the Smart City: Urbanization and Intelligent Technologies.

Urbanization.  As Wellington E. Webb, the former Mayor of Denver put it, ‘19^th century had Empires, 20^th century had Nation States and the 21^st Century will be a century of Cities.  The percent of people moving to cities is on the rise.

Intelligent Technologies.  There are many Intelligent Devices like smart meters, sensors, camera, smartcards, cell phones and all the other devices that capture and send data. There are also pervasive Broadband networks to connect all the devices and there are Analytics and Social Media to process all the real time information.  Devices plus Technology drives Smart Cities.

Why are people moving toward a Smart City? There is Sustainability. Things like going green, conserving water, power and resources is not only smart for the planet but to our overall survival. There is a business reason - economic development is occurring in these cities and there is Stimulus Funding to jump start these ventures.  A Smart City infrastructure needs to support Energy, Network Communications, Water, Transportation, Buildings, City Services and it’s technology that ties these all together.  There are also many IT opportunities in the Smart City.  Energy is one.  Rick explained that electric use has doubled from 1973 and continues to grow. Cities must meet that demand with clean, efficient energy while managing energy costs.  With the Smart Grid, there are opportunities for hardware, software, devices and communications.  There are smart meters and grid sensors, there are electric vehicles and their networks - and all these need software and analytics to help manage use. He talked about Transportation as a Service, Car 2.0 or Mobility on Demand.  For a fee (which includes everything – gas, maintenance, insurance), you can pick up a ‘TaaS’ car where ever it may be parked, use a special smartcard to unlock & start it and leave it at certain approved locations (with the smartcard capturing time/mileage/etc) for the next customer to drive.  You need routing and sharing information, charging stations, back office CRM and Asset Management software along with consumer services to make it all work.  A Daimler venture called Car2Go is in a pilot trial in Austin, TX.

In Health Care, the aging population, costs, chronic disease all bump up against the quality of life expectations we all have.  Both for better care and controlling costs we now have telemedicine, remote patient monitoring, intelligent devices, electronic health records, patient portals and so forth.  All these need to communicate, coordinate and collaborate for proper end user care.

In Retail, there is a battle between the small urban shop and the large suburban warehouses.  It costs more money to deliver goods to cities so shelf space and understanding what the consumer wants/needs is very critical.  In-store technology includes things like, self service check out, mobile Personal Shopping Assistants and digital signage. Once again, back office software and infrastructure are a major components. Partnering with someone who’s building out a lot of this infrastructure or providing the devices, might be advantageous according to Rick.

For Financial Services and consumer banking in the urban area, there will be fewer and smaller branches, fewer specialists and already, there is some acceptance of consumer self service.  Smart Banking will have Personal Teller Machines which is essentially an ATM but with video and voice. There’s mobile banking, security & fraud analytics and again, back office software, a dynamic infrastructure and those specialized controllers to seamlessly integrate and deliver all these.

He sees these Smart Cities gaining traction in mid-size cities, like Austin, TX who wants to become the Clean-Tech Capital with their Pecan Street Project. Amsterdam is another example of sustainable living in a port city. Now, instead of having the ships dock and run their diesel generators, they can plug in at the port which reduces noise and pollution. He mentioned that many of these projects are still in the early stages and establishing a Brand now is important.  Here too, partnering with engineering firms, contractors, construction and the makers of the intelligent devices is a great way to get in at the beginning and says there is a $200 Billion market globally.

The Bullets:

• Need to sell to both public and private consortia
• Look for Smart Cities popping in medium size urban areas since these are still in development
• Emerging markets in Asia and the Middle East are ripe since they are essentially starting from scratch.

ps

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