psilva's prophecies: iot

Showing posts with label iot. Show all posts

Friday, December 29, 2017

Blog Roll 2017

It’s that time of year when we gift and re-gift, just like this text from last year. And the perfect opportunity to re-post, re-purpose and re-use all my 2017 entries.

If you missed any of the 64 attempts including 16 videos, here they are wrapped in one simple entry. I read somewhere that lists in articles are good. I broke it out by month to see what was happening at the time and let's be honest, pure self-promotion. Check out our Featured Members for the year, dig into June's Cloud Month, catch up on some #Basics or sit back and watch some cool Lightboard videos.

I truly appreciate your engagement throughout 2017 and Have a Safe and Happy New Year!

January 2017

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

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The History

Thursday, December 28, 2017

The Top 10, Top 10 Predictions for 2018

The time of year when crystal balls get a viewing and many pundits put out their annual predictions for the coming year. Copying off since 2012, rather than thinking up my own, I figured I’d regurgitate what many others expect to happen.

Top 10 Cyber Security Predictions for 2018 – Infosec Institute kicks off this year’s Top 10, Top 10 list with a look back at their 2017 predictions (AI, IoT, etc.) and dives head first into 2018 noting that Ransomware will be the most dangerous threat to organizations worldwide; cryptocurrency will attract fraudsters looking to mine; cloud security will (again) be a top priority; cyber insurance will explode and cyber-bullying, especially for teenagers, is at the emergency stage.

Cyber security predictions for 2018 – Information Age taps Mike McKee, CEO of insider threat management company ObserveIT, to offer his insight. Lack of security talent will lead to the outsourcing of security services. Approximately 350,000 infosec jobs are currently unfilled in the U.S. and will continue to grow. Add to that, only 11% of the world’s information security workforce are women which offers a huge opportunity according to Mike. Social engineering and human error should encourage organizations to train folks on the basics of self-preservation on the internet.

Cybersecurity trends for 2018 - For the love of ‘cyber’…or not. CSOonline reviews McAfee Inc.’s recent threats predictions report and identified five key cyber security trends to watch in 2018. There will be a machine learning arms race between attackers and defenders with IoT ransomware causing major disruptions. EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect in May so that could have some regulatory impact.

Five predictions for the hybrid cloud market in 2018 – Hyped for Hybrid? Then NetworkWorld has you covered with, ‘Public cloud gets all the attention, but private and hybrid clouds are set for big growth in 2018.’ As hybrid cloud strategies get clearer, 2018 could be a huge year for adoption with containers and PaaS as hybrid cloud platforms. They also note that Public cloud services come on-prem and there needs to be optimized connections from organizations to cloud providers.

Experts Reveal Predictions for Cloud Services in 2018 – eWeek queries a number of cloud experts for their predictions. Partnerships and consolidation of the cloud market is coming; they, like NetworkWorld, also see a huge increase in hybrid usage; workload portability will become critical; IoT metrics will need storage and SaaS will keep growing as organizations try to avoid large hardware investments.

IDC 2018 Predictions: If You’re Not In The Cloud, You’re Isolated From Innovation – In this interesting article, IDC also goes long term with some 2020 and 2021 predictions. For instance, by 2021, at least 50% of global GDP will be digitized, with growth driven by digitally-enhanced offerings, operations and relationships. By 2021, spend on cloud services and cloud enabling hardware, software and services doubles to over $530 billion. They also touch on areas like human-digital interfaces; blockchain services and even no-code development tools. This is a good list.

Deloitte’s tech predictions for 2018: More AI, digital subscriptions, AR, and live events – VentureBeat digs into Deloitte’s predictions as part of their 17th annual Technology, Media, & Telecommunications report. Mobile predictions include interesting nuggets like a fifth of North American homes will get all of their Internet data access via cellular mobile networks and adults actually worrying that they are on phones too much. We will try to limit usage. Yea-Right. All while 5 million phones a day are being sold worldwide. TV viewing will continue to decline while more than a billion smartphone users will be creating augmented reality content at least once during 2018, with 300 million doing so monthly and tens of millions weekly.

10 Enterprise IoT Predictions for 2018 – With endless partnerships & collaboration tied to IoT, ‘co-everything’ will drive the co-economy with customers becoming co-innovators. With that, open standards, open architectures and interoperability will be key…with government regulation not far behind. Agriculture and Healthcare will emerge as the leading adopters of IoT due to innovative use cases. IoT will shift from driving efficiencies to creating new business value. AI, fog and blockchain will become important for broad adoption.

2018 Predictions For The Data Center Industry – Applications live in data centers and as I’ve said before, the Cloud is just a Data Center somewhere. Mission Critical Magazine taps into some data center trends with the biggest being, ‘IT and data center managers around the globe will become the backbone for advanced cloud infrastructure tools that provide them with a high level of flexibility and visibility into their new mixed cloud environment – adding another layer of complexity to their role.’ It’s also become less of a ‘what if’ and more of a ‘when’ in terms of unforeseen events causing outages. With that, we’ll begin to see less of a reactive approach to one that is more proactive according to Jeff Klaus, GM Data Center Management Solutions for Intel.

Predictions As A Service – If you thought the acronym PaaS was taken, then Networking Nerd will open your eyes since he thinks the prediction business is a house of cards built on quicksand. He has his safe bet layups like - Whitebox switching will grow in revenue; Software will continue to transform networking and Cisco is going to buy companies without even stepping into 2018. And then moves on to his out-on-a-limb, far out predictions like ‘HPE will go out of business’ among others. His closing take is that he’d rather try to figure out how to use what he already has today and build that toward the future because, that’s a headline you’ll never live down.

Maybe we should heed his advice.

Are you ready for 2018?

ps

Interested to see if any of the previous year’s prognoses came true?

This article originally appeared on F5.com

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Lightboard Lessons: Connecting Cars with BIG-IP

I light up how BIG-IP and Solace work together in a MQTT connected car infrastructure.

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Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Is 2017 Half Empty or Half Full?

Ransomware seems to be this year’s huge trend

With 2017 crossing the half way point, let's look at some technology trends thus far.
Breaches: Many personal records are half empty due to the continued rash of intrusions while the crooks are half full of our personal information along with some ransom payments. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), there have been 7,689 breaches since 2005 (when they started tracking) compromising – get this – 900,315,392 records. Almost 3 times the U.S. population. In 2016, 56% of all Data Breaches began with a user clicking on a phishing email. The big story for 2017 I think, is the rise of ransomware. Kaspersky reports a 250% increase in ransomware for the first few months of 2017. From WannaCry to Petya to Fusob, criminals are holding systems hostage until a ransom is paid…or not. Ransomware seems to be this year’s big trend with backups saving some from total embarrassment.

Cloud Computing: RightScale 2017 State of the Cloud Report notes that Hybrid Cloud Is the preferred enterprise strategy, with 85 percent of enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy (up from 82 percent in 2016) and Cloud Users Are Running Applications in Multiple Clouds. An interesting stat from the report says, cloud users are running applications in an average of 1.8 public clouds and 2.3 private clouds. We got hybrid cars, hybrid corn, hybrid cats and hybrid clouds but The Cloud is Still just a Datacenter Somewhere so no need to freak out. Cloud seems to be more than half full as the security and expertise challenges decline.

DNS: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, DNS is one of the most important components of a functioning internet. With that, it presents unique challenges to organizations. 2016 saw record-breaking DNS-based attacks and outages, which thrust DNS management into the spotlight as both a vulnerability and a critical asset. In 2016 DNS provider Dyn experienced a huge DDoS attack taking out many popular websites and internet cameras. And a new attack uncovered this year, DNSMessenger, uses DNS queries to conduct malicious PowerShell commands on compromised computers – a technique that makes the remote access trojan difficult to detect on targeted systems. The need for DNS continues to be half-full with the influx of IoT devices so it’ll continue to be a valuable target for riff-raff.

IoT: What can I say? The cup runneth over…again. Gartner has identified the Top 10 IoT technologies that should be on every organization's radar for 2017 and 2018. They include things like new security risks and challenges to the IoT devices themselves, their platforms and operating systems, their communications, and even the systems to which they're connected. Analytics to understand customer behavior, to deliver services and improve products. Device management, device processors, operating systems, platforms, standards and even the networks IoT devices use are all areas of attention. IoT is really three-quarters full both with the opportunities and potential risks. And the risks can be deadly when monitoring vital information like human vital signs.

Mobile: We are mobile, our devices are mobile and the applications we access are mobile. Mobility, in all its iterations, is a huge enabler and concern for enterprises and it'll only get worse as we start wearing our connected clothing to the office. 5G is still a couple years away but AT&T and Verizon have already lined up trials of their 5G networks for 2017. Mobile is certainly half full and there is no emptying it now.

That's what I got so far and I'm sure 2017's second half will bring more amazement, questions and wonders. We'll do our year-end reviews and predictions for 2018 as we all lament, where did the Year of the Rooster go?

There's that old notion that if you see a glass half full, you're an optimist and if you see it half empty you are a pessimist. I think you need to understand what state the glass itself was before the question. Was it empty and filled half way or was it full and poured out? There's your answer!

ps

This article originally appeared on F5.com.

Monday, February 20, 2017

What to Expect in 2017: Mobile Device Security

We are mobile, our devices are mobile, the networks we connect to are mobile and the applications we access are mobile. Mobility, in all its iterations, is a huge enabler and concern for enterprises and it'll only get worse as we start wearing our connected clothing to the office.

If the last 10 years wasn’t warning enough, 2017 will be a huge year for mobile…again. Every year, it seems, new security opportunities, challenges and questions surround the mobile landscape. And now it encompasses more than just the device that causes phantom vibration syndrome, it now involves the dizzying array of sensors, devices and automatons in our households, offices and municipalities. Mobile has infiltrated our society and our bodies along with it.

So the security stakes are high.

The more we become one with our mobile devices, the more they become targets. It holds our most precious secrets which can be very valuable. We need to use care when operating such a device since, in many ways, our lives depend on it. And with the increased automation, digitization and data gathering, there are always security concerns.

So how do we stay safe?

The consumerization of IT technologies has made us all administrators of our personal infrastructure of connected devices. Our digital self has become a life of its own. As individuals we need to stay vigilant about clicking suspicious links, updating software, changing passwords, backing up data, watching financial accounts, having AV/FW and generally locking down devices like we do the doors to our home. Even then, the smartphone enabled deadbolt can be a risk. And we haven’t even touched on mobile payment systems, IoT botnets or the untested, insecure apps on the mobile phone itself.

Cybersecurity is a social issue that impacts us all and we all need to be accountable.

For enterprises, mobile devices carry an increased risk, especially personal devices connecting to an internal network. From regulatory compliance to the disgruntled employee, keeping sensitive information secret is top concern. BYOD policies and MDM solutions help as does segmenting those devices away from critical info. And the issue isn’t so much seeing restricted information, especially if your job requires it, it is more about unauthorized access if the device is compromised or lost. Many organizations have policies in place to combat this, including a total device wipe…which may also blast your personal keepsakes. The endpoint security market is maturing but won’t fill the ever-present security gaps.

From your workforce to your customers, your mobile web applications are also a target. The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) reports a 250 percent jump in the number of detected phishing websites between October 2015 and March 2016. Around 230,000 unique phishing campaigns a month, many aimed at mobile devices arriving as worrisome text messages. Late 2016 saw mobile browsing overtake desktop for the first time and Google now favors mobile-friendly websites for its mobile search results. A double compatibility and SEO whammy.

And those two might not be the biggest risk to an organization since weakest link in the security ecosystem might be third-party vendors and suppliers.

On the industrial side, tractors, weather sensors, street lights, HVAC systems, your car and other critical infrastructure are now mobile devices with their own unique security implications. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) focuses on industrial control systems, device to network access and all the other connective sensor capabilities. These attacks are less frequent, at least today, but the consequences can be huge – taking out industrial plants, buildings, farms, and even entire cities.

The Digital Dress Code has emerged and with 5G on the way, mobile device security takes on a whole new meaning.

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Related:

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Lightboard Lessons: IoT on BIG-IP

As more organizations deploy IoT applications in their data centers and clouds, they're going to need their ADC to understand the unique protocols these devices use to communicate.

In this Lightboard Lesson, I light up how IoT protocol MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) works on BIG-IP v13. iRules allow you to do Topic based load balancing along with sensor authentication. And if you missed it, here is the #LBL on What is MQTT?

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Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Security Trends in 2016: Securing the Internet of Things

Whenever you connect anything to the internet, there is risk involved. Just ask the millions of IoT zombies infected with Mirai. Sure, there have been various stories over the years about hacking thermostats, refrigerators, cameras, pacemakers, insulin pumps and other medical devices along with cars, homes and hotel rooms…but Mirai took it to a new level.

And it’s not the only IoT botnet out there nor are these nasty botnets going away anytime soon. There’s a gold mine of unprotected devices out there waiting to either have their/your info stolen or be used to flood another website with traffic.

This is bound to compound in the years to come.

A recent Ponemon Institute report noted that an incredible 80% of IoT applications are not tested for vulnerabilities. Let’s try that again – only 20% of the IoT applications that we use daily are tested for vulnerabilities. There’s probably no indication or guarantee that the one you are using now has been tested.

Clearly a trend we saw in 2016, and seems to continue into 2017, is that people are focusing too much on the ‘things’ themselves and the coolness factor rather than the fact that anytime you connect something to the internet, you are potentially exposing yourself to thieves. There has been such a rush to get products to market and make some money off a new trend yet these same companies ignore or simply do not understand the potential security threats. This somewhat mimics the early days of internet connectivity when insecure PCs dialed up and were instantly inundated with worms, viruses and email spam. AV/FW software soon came along and intended to reduce those threats.

Today it’s a bit different but the cycle continues.

Back then you’d probably notice that your computer was acting funky, slowing down or malfunctioning since we interacted with it daily. Today, we typically do not spend every waking hour working with our IoT devices. They’re meant to function independently to grab data, make adjustments and alert us on a mobile app with limited human interaction. That’s the ‘smart’ part everyone talks about. But these botnets are smart themselves. With that, you may never know that your DVR is infected and allowing someone across the globe (or waiting at the nearest street corner) watch your every move.

Typical precautions we usually hear are actions like changing default passwords, not connecting it directly to the internet and updating the firmware to reduce the exposure. Software developers, too, need to plan and build in security from the onset rather than an afterthought. The security vs. usability conundrum that plagues many web applications extends to IoT applications also. But you wouldn’t, or I should say, shouldn’t deploy a financial application without properly testing it for vulnerabilities. There the risk is financial loss but with IoT and particularly medical/health devices the result can be deadly.

Mirai was just the beginning of the next wave of vulnerability exploitation. More chaos to come.

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Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Lightboard Lessons: What is MQTT?

The mad dash to connect virtually every noun to the internet or The Internet of Things, is creating a massive M2M network for all the devices, systems, sensors and actuators to connect & communicate on the Internet.

With that, they need a communications protocol to understand each other. One of those is Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT). MQTT is a “subscribe and publish” messaging protocol designed for lightweight machine-to-machine (or IoT) communications.

In this episode of Lightboard Lessons, I light up how MQTT works.

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Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Blog Roll 2016

It’s that time of year when we gift and re-gift, just like this text from last year. And the perfect opportunity to re-post, re-purpose and re-use all my 2016 entries.

After 12 years at F5, I had a bit of a transition in 2016, joining the amazing DevCentral team in February as a Sr. Solution Developer. You may have noticed a much more technical bent since then…hopefully. We completed our 101 Certification Exam this year and will be shooting for the 201 next quarter. We started highlighting our community with Featured Member spotlight articles and I finally started contributing to the awesome LightBoard Lessons series. I also had ACDF surgery this year, which is why November is so light. Thanks to the team for all their support this year. You guys are the best!

If you missed any of the 53 attempts including 7 videos, here they are wrapped in one simple entry. I read somewhere that lists in articles are good. I broke it out by month to see what was happening at the time and let's be honest, pure self-promotion. I truly appreciate the reading and watching throughout 2016.

Have a Safe and Happy New Year!

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

Q/A with Rackspace Network Architect Vijay Emarose - DevCentral's Featured Member for November

December

And a couple special holiday themed entries from years past.

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Friday, December 9, 2016

The Top 10, Top 10 Predictions for 2017

The time of year when crystal balls get a viewing and many pundits put out their annual predictions for the coming year. Rather than thinking up my own, I figured I’d regurgitate what many others are expecting to happen.

8 Predictions About How the Security Industry Will Fare in 2017 – An eWeek slideshow looking at areas like IoT, ransomware, automated attacks and the security skills shortage in the industry. Chris Preimesberger (@editingwhiz), who does a monthly #eweekchat on twitter, covers many of the worries facing organizations.

10 IoT Predictions for 2017 – IoT was my number 1 in The Top 10, Top 10 Predictions for 2016 and no doubt, IoT will continue to cause havoc. People focus so much on the ‘things’ themselves rather than the risk of an internet connection. This list discusses how IoT will grow up in 2017, how having a service component will be key, the complete mess of standards and simply, ‘just because you can connect something to the Internet doesn’t mean that you should.’

10 Cloud Computing Trends to Watch in 2017 - Talkin' Cloud posts Forrester’s list of cloud computing predictions for 2017 including how hyperconverged infrastructures will help private clouds get real, ways to make cloud migration easier, the importance (or not) of megaclouds, that hybrid cloud networking will remain the weakest link in the hybrid cloud and that, finally, cloud service providers will design security into their offerings. What a novel idea.

2017 Breach Predictions: The big one is inevitable – While not a list, per se, NetworkWorld talks about how we’ll see more intricate, complex and undetected data integrity attacks and for two main reasons: financial gain and/or political manipulation. Political manipulation? No, that’ll never happen. NW talks about how cyberattacks will get worse due to IoT and gives some ideas on how to protect your data in 2017.

Catastrophic botnet to smash social media networks in 2017 – At the halfway point the Mirai botnet rears its ugly head and ZDNet explains how Mirai is far from the end of social media disruption due to botnets. With botnets-for-hire now available, there will be a significant uptick in social media botnets which aim not only to disrupt but also to earn money for their operators in 2017. Splendid.

Torrid Networks’ Top 10 Cyber Security Predictions For 2017 – Dhruv Soi looks at the overall cyber security industry and shares that many security product companies will add machine learning twist to their products and at the same time, there will be next-gen malware with an ability to bypass machine learning algorithms. He also talks about the fast adoption of Blockchain, the shift towards mobile exploitation and the increase of cyber insurance in 2017.

Fortinet 2017 Cybersecurity Predictions: Accountability Takes the Stage - Derek Manky goes in depth with this detailed article covering things like how IoT manufacturers will be held accountable for security breaches, how attackers will begin to turn up the heat in smart cities and if technology can close the gap on the critical cyber skills shortage. Each of his 6 predictions include a detailed description along with risks and potential solutions.

2017 Security Predictions – CIO always has a year-end prediction list and this year doesn’t disappoint. Rather than reviewing the obvious, they focus on things like Dwell time, or the interval between a successful attack and its discovery by the victim. In some cases, dwell times can reach as high as two years! They also detail how passwords will eventually grow up, how the security blame game will heat up and how mobile payments, too, will become a liability. Little different take and a good read.

Predictions for DevOps in 2017 – I’d be remiss if I didn’t include some prognosis about DevOps - one of the most misunderstood terms and functions of late. For DevOps, they will start to include security as part of development instead of an afterthought, we’ll see an increase in the popularity of containerization solutions and DZone sees DevOps principals moving to mainstream enterprise rather than one-off projects.

10 top holiday phishing scams – While many of the lists are forward-looking into the New Year, this one dives into the risks of the year end. Holiday shopping. A good list of holiday threats to watch out for including fake purchase invoices, scam email deals, fake surveys and shipping status malware messages begging you to click the link. Some advice: Don’t!

Bonus Prediction!

Top 10 Most Popular Robots to Buy in 2017 – All kinds of robots are now entering our homes and appearing in society. From vacuums to automated cars to drones to digital assistants, robots are interacting with us more than ever. While many are for home use, some also help with the disabled or help those suffering from various ailments like autism, a stroke or even a missing limb. They go by many monikers like Asimo, Spot, Moley, Pepper, Jibo and Milo to name a few.

Are you ready for 2017?

If you want to see if any of the previous year’s prognoses came true, here ya go:

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Lightboard Lessons: DNS Scalability & Security

The Domain Name Service (DNS) is one of the most important components in networking infrastructure, enabling users and services to access applications by translating URLs (names) into IP addresses (numbers). Because every icon and URL and all embedded content on a website requires a DNS lookup, loading complex sites necessitates hundreds of DNS queries.

DNS lookups has exploded in recent years with mobile, IoT and the applications to support the growth. It is also a vulnerable target. In my first Lightboard Lesson, I show you how to scale, secure and consolidate your DNS infrastructure.

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Tuesday, August 23, 2016

The Intruders of Things

Gartner predicts that by 2020, IoT security will make up 20 percent of annual security budgets.

2020 seems to be an important milestone for the Internet of Things. That’s the year that Cisco says there will be 50 billion connected devices and also the year Gartner notes that over 50% of major new business processes and systems will incorporate some element of the Internet of Things.
That’s the good news.

A recent Symantec Internet Security Threat Report says there are 25 connected devices per 100 inhabitants in the US. Minimum 25 entry points to your personal information, not counting your front door, personal computers, compromised ATMs and other data sources. As your connected devices grow, so will your exposure. And with no clear methods of identifying and authenticating connected devices, enterprises will have a challenging time getting a handle on how many employee shirts, shoes, fitness trackers, and smartwatches are connected to the corporate network. And more importantly, what do they have access to?

The sneaky spreadsheet macro malware will soon be a spoofed critical alert requiring instant attention.

Healthcare is a prime target for IoT attacks and researchers have already compromised several devices revealing personal info and worse, causing the devices to malfunction. ‘Hey, why isn’t my heart beating any……’

The chaos on the feature first consumer side can be frustrating but nothing compared to industrial and manufacturing.

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) focuses on industrial control systems, device to network access and all the other connective sensor capabilities. These attacks are less frequent, at least today, but the consequences can be huge – taking out industrial plants, buildings, tractors, and even entire cities.

If you think data protection and privacy are hot now, just wait until 2020. Like BYOD, security pros need to be ready for the inevitable not just the potential of a breach. While the gadgets get all the interest, it’ll be the back end data center infrastructure that will take the brunt of the traffic – good and bad.

Organizations need an infrastructure that can both withstand the traffic growth and defend against attacks. Over on F5’s Newsroom, Lori MacVittie talks about the 3 Things the Network Must Provide for IoT – delivery, security and visibility. Things that can communicate securely with back-end apps, ADC’s that can understand the languages of things (like MQTT) and the ability to see what is going on with the things.

According to TechTarget, ensuring high availability of the IoT services will rely on boosting traffic management and monitoring. This will both mitigate business continuity risks, and prevent potential losses. From a project planning standpoint, organizations need to do capacity planning and watch the growth rate of the network so that the increased demand for the required bandwidth can be met.

If you already have BIG-IP in your back yard, you’re well on your way to being IoT ready. You got the network security to protect against inbound attacks; you can offload SSL to improve the performance of the IoT application servers; you can extend your data centers to the cloud to support IoT deployments; scale IoT applications beyond the data center when required and both encrypt and accelerate IoT connections to the cloud.

A pair of BIG-IPs in the DMZ terminates the connection. They, in turn, intelligently distribute the client request to a pool (multiple) of IoT application servers, which then query the database servers for the appropriate content. Each tier has redundant servers so in the event of a server outage, the others take the load and the system stays available.

The BIG-IP tuning may vary but it is still all about nodes, hosts, members, pools, virtual servers and the profiles and services applied. The BIG-IP platform is application and location agnostic, meaning the type of application or where the application lives does not matter. As long as you tell the BIG-IP where to find the IoT application, the BIG-IP platform will deliver it.

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Related:

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Is 2016 Half Empty or Half Full?

Updating passwords is a huge trend in 2016

With 2016 crossing the half way point, let's take a look at some technology trends thus far.

Breaches: Well, many databases are half empty due to the continued rash of intrusions while the crooks are half full with our personal information. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), there have been 522 breaches thus far in 2016 exposing almost 13,000,000 records. Many are health care providers as our medical information is becoming the gold mine of stolen info. Not really surprising since the health care wearable market is set to explode in the coming years. Many of those wearables will be transmitting our health data back to providers. There were also a bunch of very recognizable names getting blasted in the media: IRS, Snapchat, Wendy’s and LinkedIn. And the best advice we got? Don’t use the same password across multiple sites. Updating passwords is a huge trend in 2016.

Cloud Computing: According to IDC, public cloud IaaS revenues are on pace to more than triple by 2020. From $12.6 billion in 2015 to $43.6 billion in 2020. The public cloud IaaS market grew 51% in 2015 but will slightly slow after 2017 as enterprises get past the wonder and move more towards cloud optimization rather than simply testing the waters. IDC also noted that four out of five IT organizations will be committed to hybrid architectures by 2018. While hybrid is the new normal remember, The Cloud is Still just a Datacenter Somewhere. Cloud seems to be more than half full and this comes at a time when ISO compliance in the cloud is becoming even more important.

DNS: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, DNS is one of the most important components of a functioning internet. With that, it presents unique challenges to organizations. Recently, Infoblox released its Q1 2016 Security Assessment Report and off the bat said, ‘In the first quarter of 2016, 519 files capturing DNS traffic were uploaded by 235 customers and prospects for security assessments by Infoblox. The results: 83% of all files uploaded showed evidence of suspicious activity (429 files).’ They list the specific threats from botnets to protocol anomalies to Zeus and DDoS. A 2014 vulnerability, Heartbleed, still appears around 11% of the time. DevOps is even in the DNS game. In half full news, VeriSign filed two patent applications describing the use of various DNS components to manage IoT devices. One is for systems and methods for establishing ownership and delegation of IoT devices using DNS services and the other is for systems and methods for registering, managing, and communicating with IoT devices using DNS processes. Find that half full smart mug...by name!

IoT: What can I say? The cup runneth over. Wearables are expected to close in on 215 million units shipped by 2020 with 102 million this year alone. I think that number is conservative with smart eyewear, watches and clothing grabbing consumer’s attention. Then there’s the whole realm of industrial solutions like smart tractors, HVAC systems and other sensors tied to smart offices, factories and cities. In fact, utilities are among the largest IoT spenders and will be the third-largest industry by expenditure in IoT products and services. Over $69 billion has already been spent worldwide, according to the IDC Energy Insights/Ericsson report. And we haven’t even touched on all the smart appliances, robots and media devices finding spots our homes. Get ready for Big Data regulations as more of our personal (and bodily) data gets pushed to the cloud. And we’re talking a lot of data.

Mobile: We are mobile, our devices are mobile and the applications we access are mobile. Mobility, in all its iterations, is a huge enabler and concern for enterprises and it'll only get worse as we start wearing our connected clothing to the office. The Digital Dress Code has emerged. With 5G on the way, mobile is certainly half full and there is no empting it now.

Of course, F5 has solutions to address many of these challenges whether you’re boiling over or bone dry. Our security solutions, including Silverline, can protect against malicious attacks; no matter the cloud - private, public or hybrid - our Cloud solutions can get you there and back; BIG-IP DNS, particularly DNS Express, can handle the incredible name request boom as more ‘things’ get connected; and speaking of things, your data center will need to be agile enough to handle all the nouns requesting access; and check out how TCP Fast Open can optimize your mobile communications.

That's what I got so far and I'm sure 2016's second half will bring more amazement, questions and wonders. We'll do our year-end reviews and predictions for 2017 as we all lament, where did the Year of the Monkey go?

There's that old notion that if you see a glass half full, you're an optimist and if you see it half empty you are a pessimist. I think you need to understand what state the glass itself was before the question. Was it empty and filled half way or was it full and poured out? There's your answer!

ps

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

The Visible Data of the Invisible User

As the march to connect each and every noun on this planet continues with a blistering pace, the various ways, contraptions and sensors used to collect data is greatly expanding. What once was a (relatively) small collection of fitness trackers, smartwatches, thermostats, automobiles and surveillance cameras has grown into a an industry where shirts, shoes, sleeping bags and even liquor bottles want to gather your info. And most of these devices monitor silently without you even knowing. According to Ryan Matthew Pierson over at Readwrite.com, ‘The strength of IoT is in its ability to be invisible to the user.’

In addition, the mad dash to simply insert a chip, beacon and software into everyday objects is slowly graduating to era where user experience, privacy and security are becoming critically important for mass adoption. In 2014 Gartner released a report saying the typical family home could have as many as 500 smart devices by 2022. The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) notes that 20% of US households now own an activity tracking wearable device, two-times the households that owned one last year. And Nielsen reported that smartphone penetration has reached 82% in the U.S.

Interacting and engaging with the customer in real time is a desire of many organizations.

From media and entertainment, to appliances, to transport technologies, to security and environmental controls, along with healthcare and fitness equipment almost every ‘thing’ around us will track something. Or as Dr. Nick Riviera sings, ‘The knee bone's connected to the something. The something's connected to the red thing. The red thing's connected to my wrist watch... Uh oh.’

And it is not only consumer items.

The Industrial IoT is helping farmers with connected tractors, soil sensors, crop health apps and the like. There are HVAC systems that are managed by sensors; Streetlights, utilities, parking and traffic in a connected city; and even sports teams are using wearable tech to gain a competitive advantage. And according to Research and Markets, wearable tech in schools is set to surge over the next 5 years.

With the IoT growth comes threats, along with resources to reduce the risks. In Gartner’s latest forecast, IoT security spending is set to nearly double between 2014 and 2018, growing from about $232 million to almost $550 million. Nearly $350 million will go into securing IoT this year alone. They also predict that there will be 6.4 billion connected devices in use worldwide this year, up 30% from 2015.

The security investment is good news since according to Spiceworks and Cox Business, the flood of IT devices entering the market does create security and privacy issues in the workplace. 84% of their survey-takers named the growing number of entry points into the network as a major concern. Number two on the list, at 70% of respondents, was insufficient security measures on the part of IoT manufacturers.

But soon we might be able to solve some of the challenges with our Brain.

There are some very smart research brains out there that have come up with a way to identify you by your brain waves with 100% accuracy. This is your Brainprint. A team of researchers at Binghamton University, recorded the brain activity of 50 people wearing an electroencephalogram headset while they looked at a series of 500 images. The pictures were designed specifically to elicit unique responses from person to person. Images included things like pizza, a boat, certain words, celebrities and so forth. They found that participants' brains reacted differently to each image, enough that a computer system was able to identify each volunteer's ‘brainprint’ with 100% accuracy.

According to researchers, brain biometrics are appealing because they are cancellable and cannot be stolen by malicious means like a fingerprint or retina scan. The results indicate that brainwaves could be used by security systems to verify a person's identity. This could be key since our personal data and pattern of life seems to be more valuable now than a silly, worthless credit card number.

Brain & Invisibility: Activate!

<< signed 'ps' in Invisible Ink

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