Internet of Things and Privacy
The Internet of Things refers to the network of physical devices which generally include the home appliances and some other items which are embedded with sensors, software, actuators, electronics, and the connectivity which enables the embedded items to connect directly and exchange data (Atzori, Iera & Morabito, 2010). Every embedded item is identifiable uniquely by the computing system put in place. The number of capable online devices is increasing at a higher rate and it is anticipated to follow the same trend in future. With the Internet of Things, objects can be sensed or rather can be controlled remotely within the network infrastructure put in place (Chahid, Benabdellah & Azizi, 2017). This creates opportunities for directly integrating the physical world into systems which are computer-based. This results to improvement in accuracy, efficiency and economic benefit. It also leads to the reduction of the human intervention as most of the duties which could otherwise be performed manually by individuals are performed digitally by the computer systems put in place.
Internet of Things is gaining interest and many people are adapting to the new innovations (Miorandi, Daniele, Sabrina Sicari, Pellegrini & Imrich Chlamtac). This interferes with people’s privacy as much of the data is collected with their knowledge. As the Internet of Things becomes popular, consumers must ask for better security measures which protect their privacy and vulnerability to workplace surveillance and data breaches. Before consumers demand for change, it requires that they be informed about the security measures put in place by companies. This therefore requires the companies to be transparent in as much as workplace surveillance and consumer privacy is concerned. The Internet of Things has made consumers to surrender their privacy without their knowledge. This is due to the fact that they are not aware of the kind of data being collected about them and its use. It is expected that consumers buy products which are upgraded. It is most likely that these upgraded products are equipped with monitoring devices which will be monitoring the consumers in their daily activities. This has been the case as mobile applications and other Wi-Fi-connected products replace the old-fashioned products in the market. It therefore goes without say that consumers will be forced to buy products that track them without their awareness. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
Most people do not check the privacy statements for the devices they purchase or the apps they download (Gan & Jiang, 2011). Even if they attempted to read the privacy policies, most of them would be put down in a legal language that the average consumer may not clearly understand the meaning. Some devices also have unintelligible terms of use. They indicate mandatory arbitration clauses which forces consumers give up their right to sue the manufacturers in a court of law in case the manufacturer’s product causes harm to them. This compromises the privacy of consumers and leaves them without any remedy.
With the current digital era, consumers have become aware that businesses use the personal information that is collected when accessing services. Majority of the consumers have have started exercising control on how their data is used, for example, by signing consent forms. This has been highly challenged by the Internet of Things since it changes the relationship the individuals have with their personal data. The top challenges are the invisibility and ubiquity. Connected devices transmit data secretly without the device owners realizing when and how it happens. The documentation that records the data transfer to different parties is also complex. The Internet of Things uses multiple providers’ technologies of and this makes the tracking of personal data collected difficult in most cases (Weber, 2010). These same issues have made it difficult for the Australian government and industry to address the privacy challenges associated with the Internet of Things. Many organizations are seeking to address the unique challenges that Internet of Things poses to data privacy to consumers and the industry in general. These are non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which include Consumers International and the Online Trust Alliance (OTA), the Government bodies such as the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and intergovernmental such as the Global Privacy Enforcement Network (GPEN).
Although privacy is a major issue of concern, Internet of Things has continued to gain interest. This is due to the fact that it is efficient, convenient and economical both to consumers and business organizations. Internet of Things is being applied in everyday life as technology advances. Internet of Things market shows that the demand for Internet of Things is set to increase and Forbes has predicted the Internet of Things market will to reach $267 billion by 2020. Here is the evidence of how Internet of Things is being embraced and utilized in daily activities:
- Environmental Monitoring
Internet of Things is being used to protect and utilize the environment in the best way possible. Water, soil and air measurement devices help us to know the types of plants to grow in different types of soils and areas to achieve maximum yields (Wortmann & Flüchter, 2015). Earthquake and tsunami warning systems helps us prevent damages and victims. Wild life has also been monitored and protected from poachers by the use of Internet of Things and this has helped prevent their extinction.
- Smart Homes
Internet of Things devices have been used home automation. In this case, smart home systems use a controller which provides all the users with a central control for their devices (Xia, Yang, Wang & Vinel, 2012). These devices include heating lighting, air conditioning and security systems. These systems are efficient and easy to use but they are associated with high initial costs.
- Infrastructure Management
Infrastructure Management Systems are being used in monitoring and tracking problems in urban and rural Infrastructure such as railways, bridges and roads (Weber & Weber, 2010). This helps reduce the risk of danger. Internet of Things is also used to test the strength and weakness of an infrastructure and any default found is reported as soon as possible for immediate action. Internet of Things can help the construction industry in time and cost saving, improving the quality of workday, paperless workflow and all this will lead to increase in productivity. It can also help in fast decision making and thus save money with Real-Time data analytics.
iv. Media
Internet of things is used primarily by the media when marketing and studying the consumer habits (Vermesan, Friess, Guillemin, Gusmeroli, Sundmaeker, Bassi & Doody, 2011). The devices collect much individual information which helps the media in establishing any behavioral changes. Further information is collected by checking how consumers interact with the content that is displayed by producers in line with the customer habits. This is done by tracking the customer conversation, drop off rate, registration and interaction rate. Some challenges are experienced from the big size of data but in many cases benefits gained from the data greatly outweigh the challenges.
- Industrial Applications
Industrial applications have been used to investigate the product quality in order to optimize marketing by checking the customers who are interested to a specific product (Tan & Wang, 2010). Control of Network and management of asset, equipment and manufacturing and controlling the process of manufacturing make use of the Internet of Things in industrial applications as well as smart manufacturing. The Internet of Things intelligent systems enable new products manufacturing rapidly, dynamic response to the demand of products and real-time optimization of manufacturing and production supply chain network. This is done by sensors, networking machinery as well as the control systems (Miorandi, Sicari, Pellegrini & Chlamtac, 2012).
Internet of Things has enabled in automating process controls, service information systems as well as the operator tools by use of digital control systems. This helps in optimizing safety and security within the plant. Internet of Things also extends to asset management by use of the statistical evaluation, predictive maintenance and measurements aimed at maximizing reliability. Smart industrial management systems are also integrated with smart grid and this enables real-time energy optimization (Roman, Zhou & Lopez, 2013). Health and safety management, automated controls, plant optimization and other functions are all provided by a vast number of networked sensors. Industrial Internet of things is encountered in the manufacturing industries and refers to the industrial Internet of Things subset. Industrial Internet of things in manufacturing generates a high business value that eventually leads to industrial revolution (Medaglia & Serbanati2010). In future it is anticipated that companies will increase their revenue through Internet of things (Roman, Zhou & Lopez, 2013). This can be achieved by improving productivity and creating new business models exploiting analytics for innovation and transforming workforce.
It is anticipated that in the near future different which include mobile phones, sensors and even cars will be connected by the Internet and wireless technology (Leontiadis, Elkhiyaoui, Önen, Molva, Bouij-Pasquier, Kalam & Slamanig,). Estimates have shown that the number of devices connecting to the Internet is increasing at a fast phase. These devices consume, produce and process information related to different environments which include factories, logistic applications, airports and also everyday activities of the people. The society is in great need efficient secure solutions for managing of the broad, complex network Internet of Things and supporting the various modern business models.
In future the era of computing will be outside the traditional desktop computing (Kumar & Patel, 2014). Majority of the surrounding objects will be on the network in one form or another. Information and communication systems will be invisibly embedded in the environment. This challenge will be encountered by Radio Frequency Identification and the sensor network technologies (Oleshchuk, 2012). This results in the vast data generation which needs to be stored in a presentable and interpretable form. Cloud computing will provide virtual infrastructure for the utility computing which normally integrates storage and monitoring devices, visualization platforms, client delivery and analytics tools. Cloud computing offers cost based model that will enable the end-to-end service businesses provisioning and also enables users to access applications on demand (Sicari, Rizzardi, Grieco & Coen-Porisini 2015).
Context computation and Smart connectivity with networks forms a crucial part of the Internet of Things (Kopetz, 2011). The presence of Wi-Fi as well as the 4G-LTE wireless Internet access gives a clear evidence of the evolution resulting to ubiquitous information and communication networks (Zhao, 2013). In order for the Internet of Things vision to emerge successfully, the computing paradigm has to go beyond traditional mobile computing scenarios and enable the connectivity of everyday objects and embedding intelligence in the environment (Suo, Wan, Zou & Liu, 2012). Internet of Things is expected to be adapted by the majority of business organizations and individuals in the near future.
References
Atzori, L., Iera, A., & Morabito, G. (2010). The internet of things: A survey. Computer networks, 54(15), 2787-2805.
Chahid, Y., Benabdellah, M., & Azizi, A. (2017, April). Internet of things security. In Wireless Technologies, Embedded and Intelligent Systems (WITS), 2017 International Conference on(pp. 1-6). IEEE.
Gan, G., Lu, Z., & Jiang, J. (2011, August). Internet of things security analysis. In Internet Technology and Applications (iTAP), 2011 International Conference on (pp. 1-4). IEEE.
Kopetz, H. (2011). Internet of things. In Real-time systems (pp. 307-323). Springer, Boston, MA.
Kumar, J. S., & Patel, D. R. (2014). A survey on internet of things: Security and privacy issues. International Journal of Computer Applications, 90(11).
Leontiadis, I., Elkhiyaoui, K., Önen, M., Molva, R., Bouij-Pasquier, I., El Kalam, A. A., … & Slamanig, D. Internet of Things and Privacy.
Medaglia, C. M., & Serbanati, A. (2010). An overview of privacy and security issues in the internet of things. In The Internet of Things (pp. 389-395). Springer, New York, NY.
Miorandi, Daniele, Sabrina Sicari, Francesco De Pellegrini, and Imrich Chlamtac. “Internet of things: Vision, applications and research challenges.” Ad hoc networks 10, no. 7 (2012): 1497-1516.
Miorandi, D., Sicari, S., De Pellegrini, F., & Chlamtac, I. (2012). Internet of things: Vision, applications and research challenges. Ad hoc networks, 10(7), 1497-1516.
Oleshchuk, V. (2012, May). Internet of things and privacy preserving technologies. In Wireless Communication, Vehicular Technology, Information Theory and Aerospace & Electronic Systems Technology, 2009. Wireless VITAE 2009. 1st International Conference on (pp. 336-340). IEEE.
Roman, R., Zhou, J., & Lopez, J. (2013). On the features and challenges of security and privacy in distributed internet of things. Computer Networks, 57(10), 2266-2279.
Sicari, S., Rizzardi, A., Grieco, L. A., & Coen-Porisini, A. (2015). Security, privacy and trust in Internet of Things: The road ahead. Computer networks, 76, 146-164.
Suo, H., Wan, J., Zou, C., & Liu, J. (2012, March). Security in the internet of things: a review. In Computer Science and Electronics Engineering (ICCSEE), 2012 international conference on (Vol. 3, pp. 648-651). IEEE.
Tan, L., & Wang, N. (2010, August). Future internet: The internet of things. In Advanced Computer Theory and Engineering (ICACTE), 2010 3rd International Conference on(Vol. 5, pp. V5-376). IEEE.
Vermesan, O., Friess, P., Guillemin, P., Gusmeroli, S., Sundmaeker, H., Bassi, A., … & Doody, P. (2011). Internet of things strategic research roadmap. Internet of Things-Global Technological and Societal Trends, 1(2011), 9-52.
Weber, R. H. (2010). Internet of Things–New security and privacy challenges. Computer law & security review, 26(1), 23-30.
Weber, R. H., & Weber, R. (2010). Internet of things (Vol. 12). New York, NY, USA:: Springer.
Wortmann, F., & Flüchter, K. (2015). Internet of things. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 57(3), 221-224.
Xia, F., Yang, L. T., Wang, L., & Vinel, A. (2012). Internet of things. International Journal of Communication Systems, 25(9), 1101.
Yang, S. H. (2014). Internet of things. In Wireless Sensor Networks (pp. 247-261). Springer, London.
Zhao, K., & Ge, L. (2013, December). A survey on the internet of things security. In Computational Intelligence and Security (CIS), 2013 9th International Conference on (pp. 663-667). IEEE.