Protect the Internet of Things in the home

Protect the Internet of Things in the home

The IoT has invaded the home with fun, expensive, functional devices that are definitely personal even if they are not portable. Today's IoT home devices are premium products, yet given their practicality, they will be embraced by mainstream homeowners, renters, and even landlords. (Think about the potential synergy between the IoT and, say, Airbnb.)

Where the fun stops is in potential privacy concerns, and there's a value-added role that internet service providers (ISPs) can play in helping ensure an overall security posture for the IoT-enabled home.

Forget Fitbits and Apple Watches and think about the smart thermostat, the connected smoke detector, the digital door lock, the security system, the security cameras. Think about the Amazon Echo smart hub, Samsung Smart TVs with speech recognition, and even the pretty Philips Hue mood lighting.

Personal IoT devices, like those headline-grabbing Apple watches, use a smartphone as their connection hub. By contrast, most if not all home-based IoT equipment uses the home Wi-Fi network to connect to a cloud-based service provider. That's not universal; by default, the August smart lock talks to a phone via Bluetooth.

Some IoT devices also use Bluetooth for command-and-control. For example, you can pair an iPhone with the Amazon Echo and use it as a remote speaker. In general, however, the true hub of the home Internet of Things is the network router that acts as the DOCSIS head unit for cable or ADSL/VDSL head unit for DSL, with a few wired Ethernet ports and some flavor of 802.11 Wi-Fi in the mix.

All, or nearly all, of the home IoT traffic passes through that device. That includes telemetry sent into the cloud by the IoT devices, command-and-control pushed from the cloud to the devices (often through polling), firmware updates, and so on.

This centralized connectivity also enables the possibility for several types of mischief. Hackers might try to infiltrate the home router (which is often sitting with its default device password and either public Wi-Fi or one with an easy-to-guess password), and once on the network, get to the IoT devices. Hackers might also attack by attempting to compromise the cloud services behind the IoT and cause trouble that way.

To pick a third possibility, the cloud service providers backending the IoT products might behave in a not-very-nice way. Certainly, some have expressed fear after seeing what various smart televisions were doing with their data.

There is an opportunity for ISPs: the DOCSIS or ADSL/VDSL device is smart, and working in conjunction with the carrier's data center, it can act as a smart filter, as a kind of automated firewall that understands the customer's smart home and works behind the scenes to safeguard it.

Consider the value of antivirus/antimalware that filters at the carrier level, protecting IoT devices that truly can't defend themselves. The home router could easily detect which devices connecting to its Wi-Fi are IoT (as opposed to laptops, desktops, phone and tablets), and learn which services are allowed to talk to them.

Only Nest's server, for example, should be allowed to poll to the home thermostat to see if the consumer is home or away. Only August should be able to push new firmware to the digital door lock. Only Amazon should be able to see which commands the Echo is processing. But even in those cases, of course, the consumer should be able to block those services at their home network perimeter, confident that the IoT service can't circumvent the firewall.

And heaven only knows who should be accessing the SmartTV's microphone. Wouldn't that be a nice feature to add to the home router's control setting page – block the smart television microphone.

With the right consumer-friendly front end, the carrier-based IoT firewall could go a step further, offering the customer an inventory of active devices and the option to require discrete authorization before a new device can go live on the network.

The era of the home Internet of Things is upon us; soon, these devices will be in nearly every house, apartment, condo, and even dorm room. Carriers have a unique opportunity to guard those devices, because the IoT's customer is the carrier's customer too. That's a value-add customers would very likely embrace.

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Amazon Echo : Connected Devices

Amazon Echo : Connected Devices

Amazon’s Echo, a connected device that combines the abilities of Siri and a bluetooth speaker in a 9.25-inch tall cylinder, is now available for anyone to buy if they have $179.99. And I’m here to tell you that if you have a music collection on Amazon’s cloud then you should fork over the cash and get one. For everyone else, keep reading to see if this product, which ships July 14, makes sense for you.

I’ve owned the Amazon Echo since December, and was in the first wave of people who were invited to purchase the product at a special $99 rate for Amazon Prime members. When it first arrived I was wowed by how well the Echo worked, compared to other voice recognition devices I’ve tried in the home.

However, you couldn’t do much with it, because Amazon only linked it to its services and the Bing search engine. But since February, Amazon has opened up to developers and the device shows promise as a voice-activated home automation control, a way to order products online. and a convenient link to some cloud services such as Google and If This Then That.
What is it?

Amazon Echo : Connected Devices

Courtesy of Amazon

The Amazon Echo is essentially a voice-activated personal assistant for your home. People go into the house ,via Digital Door Lock , ask it questions, ask it to read books from Audible, ask for sports scores, set timers and even get it to tell terrible jokes.

Some people set it up as an alarm clock, and have it read the day’s news from NPR when it wakes them up. It also is linked to Amazon Prime Music, which means it acts as a credible speaker that will play any music that’s available in your personal Amazon music library or the free music available for Prime members.

The sound quality is akin to what you get on a Jambox or other bluetooth speaker. It’s good, but it won’t replace a high-end stereo. Amazon launched with access to streaming music from TuneIn and Rdio, but it now growing to other services including Pandora. I’m waiting for it to link to Spotify, so I can ask it to play me any song on that particular service.

My daughter loves this aspect of the Echo, and requesting the Echo play a song is probably the most used command we give it. Which is why if your music is on Amazon Prime, I think this device is a no-brainer. It gives you a way to verbally access your entire music collection, plus some other fun voice-activated features.

The Echo also can act as a Bluetooth speaker for your phone, so I could play Spotify on the Echo’s speaker using my phone, although that defeats the purpose for me. It does double as a speakerphone if you want to get the whole family around to sing Happy Birthday to someone.

The speaker fills up a normal-sized room, but isn’t enough to cover my entire downstairs. You can adjust the volume by turning a ring at the top of the Echo, asking it to turn it down, or using a remote control that you can buy for $29.99.


Living with Alexa

That’s what the Echo is, so what’s it like to live with it? The device arrives in a single box and takes about five minutes to set up. I put mine on a counter in the kitchen because we can talk to it from anywhere downstairs and it can hear us. I wish I had one upstairs in my bedroom as well, but I’m not entirely sure I need two of them.

You plug it in, download the Amazon Echo app, and then use the app connect it to your Wi-Fi network or Pocket WiFi. The app also offers a way to see what the Echo hears, so you can check weird results. My Echo came with a remote control, but the current Echo requires a separate remote control purchase.

The remote lets you issue spoken commands from farther away or in a noisy environment, and also allows you to skip songs or adjust volume. You can affix the remote to something using double-sided tape or a built-in magnet. It connects to the Echo via Bluetooth so it’s not super effective over long distances.

Once the Echo is plugged in, you have the option of setting up a few things. The first is the “wake word” that will trigger the device to listen. While the Echo has seven microphones (so it can hear you wherever you are in a room), the device only “listens” and opens a connection to the Amazon cloud service when it hears either “Alexa” or “Amazon” (the user chooses one of those words, and Amazon has promised other wake words eventually).

We chose Alexa, which means that anytime someone says “Alexa” the Echo wakes up.
You’ll know it is listening because the ring of LEDs at the top of the cylinder will glow blue, with the lightest blue light facing the direction that the Echo last heard you. It’s a subtle user interface that makes it feel like the device is attuned to you without being creepy.

Once the lights are on (or even a bit before) you can ask your question or issue your command. There is also a setting that will turn the microphones off, so you don’t have to worry that Jeff Bezos is spying on you. However, turning the mics off defeats the purpose of using voice as a hands-free interface.

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