The Cloud and the Internet of Things

Back in 1982, some smart aleck at Carnegie Mellon University thought it would be fun to modify a Coke machine by giving it a network interface. That way, anyone on campus could remotely check in on the machine’s stock of their preferred beverage (and even how cold it was). When I first heard about this, long ago, I thought it was a brilliant but silly hack—fun, sure, but ultimately pointless.

In the years since, however, people have figured out how to connect almost any conceivable object to the Internet. Using tiny, low-cost controllers (usually with embedded Wi-Fi transceivers, but sometimes with Bluetooth or other wireless circuitry), engineers have added Internet connectivity to light bulbs, thermostats, door locks, cameras, refrigerators, bathroom scales, speakers, water bottles, and thousands of other devices. In some cases, as with the Coke machine, the device merely reports on its status over the Internet; in others, sophisticated two-way communication and control is possible. Some of these objects have no built-in user interface, while others use screens, buttons, microphones, and other controls to interact directly with users.

All these devices—Internet-connected objects of all kinds that don’t fall into conventional categories such as computers, tablets, and phones—are collectively called The Internet of Things, or IoT. (You’ll frequently hear the individual devices referred to as smart objects.) With rare exceptions, they connect—directly or indirectly—to the Cloud and rely on cloud apps and services to function. So I thought it was important to spend at least a few pages talking about these objects and what their connection to the Cloud might mean to you.

The Good News

Among the key capabilities the IoT promises are knowledge and control. For example, you no longer have to wonder, while you’re at work, whether you left the door unlocked or the air conditioner on; you can know. And if that object at home is in the wrong state, you can change it remotely, no matter where you are. You don’t have to record your weight every morning, just step on your scale and the data is stored automatically in a cloud-accessible app. If you’re cold in the middle of the night, don’t get out of bed, just talk to a smart speaker on your shelf, which in turn tells your thermostat to raise the heat. And a device in your pocket or on your wrist can tell you about the state of nearly any object in your home or car, and enable you to control it too.

IoT devices can also make the activities you already do simpler and quicker. If you want to remember to perform a task, you could open a reminders app on your phone and type it in. Or you could do what I do, which is to raise my left wrist and say, “Hey Siri, add ‘Trim the hedges’ to my To Do list.” It’s already easy to turn off the lights in one room by flipping a switch, but with IoT devices, you can turn off all the lights in the house as you climb into bed. Lost your keys, wallet, or phone? Instead of turning the house upside down, you can track their location or have them emit an audible signal by using an app on another device. Running low on laundry detergent? No need to sign in to Amazon on your computer; all you need is a single press on the Amazon Dash button stuck to your washing machine, and a new container magically arrives tomorrow.

All this, of course, is the barest beginning. If you embrace the idea of a connected future in which we’re all immersed in a sea of smart objects that instantly tell us whatever we want to know and reduce once-complicated tasks to a casual gesture or command, you surely greet the Internet of Things with optimism and enthusiasm—all signs are that we’re heading to the future of your dreams. Except…

The Bad News

Despite the significant benefits the IoT promises, there’s a downside, and it’s almost entirely due to the cloud-connected nature of smart objects. That is to say, if your devices talked only to one another, or only to a hub within your home under your control, most of the potential difficulties would disappear. But because most IoT activities are mediated by cloud apps and services, you should keep in mind issues like the following:

• The cloud provider to which your smart objects connect can and almost certainly does collect and store all the data generated by the devices, which can include audio and video recordings, detailed records of when you’re home and away, what activities you perform during the day, and much more. That data can be used to customize devices’ behavior to be more helpful. But it can also be sold to advertisers who would like a detailed profile of you, or used for a wide range of nefarious purposes. And, even if the cloud provider itself is entirely trustworthy and has only your best interests at heart, a bug, security breach, or other mishap could put your extremely private data in unwanted hands.
• Similarly, bugs, security breaches, and the like can lead to a lot more than people knowing things about you that they shouldn’t. For example:
  • A software glitch could cause your heating or cooling system to shut down.
  • If the company that makes your smart home products is acquired or goes out of business, they could all spontaneously stop working.
  • Smart devices without sufficient security features could be taken over and turned into a giant botnet that attacks major Internet services.
  • A burglar with hacking skills could remotely disable your home alarm system and then unlock your front door.
• It’s wonderful that you can turn a light on or off using an app on your phone. But stories abound of people who had no other way to turn that light on or off, and got stuck when they lost their phone or the app malfunctioned.
• Any given IoT object may be incompatible with others in your home, or with future systems you’ll want to use.
• If an app on your computer or phone needs upgrading, it might happen automatically, or a message might pop up, urging you to apply the update manually. But if your smart faucet or tea kettle needs a software update to patch a security issue, how will you know—and how do you apply that update?

I could go on, but my main point is that when all your devices are constantly talking to a variety of cloud services, all that data is out of your control. Bad things could happen, and they frequently do. Unfortunately, security is often not a high priority for IoT manufacturers—especially for startups who are trying to rush new products to market. And that frequent lack of attention to security makes those fancy objects more vulnerable to hacks and privacy leaks.

Because the public Cloud (and the large companies that power it) increases the risks of using smart devices, some analysts predict a future in which personal cloud devices (see The Personal Cloud), such as computers and appliances you keep in your home, will increasingly take over many of the activities that currently rely on huge corporations and their massive data centers. There’s an argument to be made that a distributed approach like this would make the IoT safer, if also somewhat less useful. Time will tell how that prediction plays out.

I wish I could offer specific recommendations of smart objects to prefer or avoid, but that’s beyond the scope of this book. However, I do strongly recommend that you carefully investigate the security story for any new IoT object you’re considering. And with new devices, always check to see what settings you can modify, change default passwords, and opt out of data collection and sharing if you can.