24. Internet of Things (IoT): Growth, Challenges, and Security

The concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) was initially proposed by Kevin Ashton, who, in 1998, connected a radio microchip out of a credit card and stuck it on a lipstick shade to see if the wireless network could pick up data on the card and tell him what shelf in the store the lipstick was on. Since then, his simple idea and experiment have been extended to support pervasive connectivity and the integration of a variety of objects big and small creating an ecosystem of interconnected communication networks, whose devices or communication nodes are everyday electronic objects such as mobile devices, entertainment devices in your home, fridges and temperature control devices, garage door openers, and clothes and dishwashers. When network connectivity is achieved, it allows all these devices to talk to each other by sending and receiving data. This smart environment is achieved by seamless ubiquitous sensing, data analytics, and information representation with Cloud computing as the unifying framework. The environment allows for virtually endless opportunities and connections to take place, many of which we cannot even think of or fully understand the impact of. It is not hard to see how and why the IoT certainly opens the door to a lot of opportunities but also to many challenges. Security is a big issue that is oftentimes brought up. With billions of devices being connected together, what can people do to make sure that their information stays secure? The IoT also opens up companies all over the world to more security threats. Then we have the issue of privacy and data sharing. This chapter focuses on all these hot issues.