Over the last couple of years, the Internet of Things grew into a huge gate between the reality and the digital world, and CES 2018 was the event that nailed it. IoT dominated the event with a vengeance, and it could be roughly divided into two major areas: smart home (with a nod to smart city) and industrial Internet of Things (with a nod to the much-hyped Industry 4.0).

The event showed the inevitable changes in the industrial sector that are likely to reward early adopters with shares on the market. Meanwhile those who avoid innovation get left behind in the long run. Such companies as Bosch reinvent the way manufacturers run their facilities, with a focus on increased performance and care for safety of human workers.

Smart home was represented not only by a huge variety of standalone products, but also by closed ecosystems created by such consumer tech giants as LG.

Automotive industry always has been leading in innovation with self-driving and connected cars being part of the IoT market. This year all major car manufacturers hosted a kind of car show inside CES, introducing new automotive IoT products.

Besides these spheres, there were two more major followers of IoT trends: healthcare and retail. Both aim for automation of operations, provision of personalized experience to customers, and overall transformation of the ways they operate.

Here's Wishing you a Very Happy, Smart, and Innovative New Year! 

Internet of Things (IoT) has been revolutionizing the world with its millions of innovations. In 2017 IoT reached its milestone by creating several break-throughs with significant technological advancements. All of these technologies, products, and solutions saw the limelight at the world's largest and the most powerful technology event, Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2018 at Las Vegas, a Catalyst for Innovations.  

The vision of the Internet of Things (IoT) is to transform the way individual lives, work and communicates with one another. These innovations are meant to simplify by offering products and solutions that are simple, affordable, easy to use, efficient and productive for building a Smart, Safe and Connected world. 

With these above IoT goals in mind, I am personally impressed to highlight some of these mind-boggling innovative products and solutions that was unveiled last week at the CES 2018. 

1. Forever Batteries: The battery maker Ossia launched its AA-sized batteries that suck power out of the air using its IP technology called Cota. Ossia has developed a means of wireless power transmission which Ossia claims can keep the AA battery charged up or provide power to a smartphone that either incorporates Cota's technology natively or uses specific charging case. However, Ossia hasn't revealed much about the working of their Cota technology. This irreplaceable battery will eliminate the spending expenditure 'Forever'. 

2. Byton's $45,000 Gadgeted Electric Smart Car: Chinese Start-up unveiled its first and futuristic real smart electric car. The name refers to 'Bytes on Wheels.' Former BMW and Apple Engineers created it. It has the hardware on board to enable full self-driving mode. The vision behind Byton is to be the company to bring to the market the first real 'Smart' car. Inside the car, the drivers and passengers can interact with the huge display panel. Byton aims to merge an individual's life outside the car with the experience inside the vehicle. Everything will be controlled via the touch, and certain aspects will be controlled via voice (voice recognition by Amazon's Alexa) and gesture control. The key is customisation. When the car is in drive mode, specific features will be disabled. It will not allow watching videos for instance. Byton aims to build a platform where, when there is autonomous driving all occupants of the car including the driver can interact. Some of the features of Byton will be fully-disabled until we live in a world of fully autonomous driving. Fierce competition to Tesla and from my perspective it is redefining life. But the one challenge that might stump Byton is the lack of fast-charging stations. Another major competitor to watch for will be Fisker's EMotion a luxury smart autonomous sports sedan. Although Fisker is not a competition concerning the price factor; however, is a competitor to watch for its technology and new solid-state battery which they filed for a patent. The battery is expected to provide the Electric Vehicles with a range of over 500 miles on a single charge and will take only one minute for recharging. 

3. Razer's SmartPhone Laptop - Project Linda: Razer brings you a disruption in the world of gaming with its Project Linda which is a concept of ultraportable laptop design powered by the Android-based Razer Phone. The docked phone serves as an intelligent touchpad, bridging the gap between handheld entertainment and laptop convenience. The Razer Phone's display, performance, and dual front-firing speakers combine seamlessly with Linda's keyboard, larger screen, and battery to provide ultimate mobile hybrid setup for creativity, gaming, and productivity. Although the Project Linda feels like a product from a Sci-fi world or a future that might not see the daylights after the CES 2018. However, the prototypes like a concept car for gadgets is both sensational and aspirational. Razer hasn't confirmed if it plans to make the smartphone project Linda for a go-to-market next year. 

4. Google Voice Assistant: Google creates a whirlwind at the CES 2018 with its Voice Assistants and predicts to dominate the future homes. Lilian Rincon, Google director of product management, reckons customers making their home “smart” by using the Assistant to turn on lights, boil the kettle and do other tasks could save 15 minutes from their morning routine. Google's Voice Assistant is eroding the well established Amazon's Alexa, a fierce competitor for its voice assistant. Google has already discussed partnerships with various Industry verticals for integrating their Voice Assistant in realizing the goal of "Smart and Connected World." In my opinion, I see this as the most significant breakthrough as Google is not charging the end-user but is working with all its third-party vendors to integrate the voice assistant into their products and solutions. Google showed off a plethora of new Voice Assistant-enabled devices from companies like Lenovo, Sony and LG, featuring “smart displays” that displays information like the schedules, things-to-do, cooking recipes, and other bits of visual accoutrement whenever we ask the Assistant for something. Also, you'll find Assistant integration inside more televisions, headphones — even in new cars, thanks to Android Auto, which is already available in more than 400 car models. The Assistant integration eliminates the need for having an independent device and allows you to manage everything from your one device - 'The SmartPhone.'

5. Smart Hearing-Aids EARGO Max: Technology for healthcare and especially the elderly is something I am very much interested though tech for elderly-care is still a growing area. The ageing population is a growing business opportunity, and EARGO Max might be the airpods of hearing aids. The hearing-aids have a collection of useful features, the most stand-out of which is a complete lack of need for expensive replaceable batteries. The set of hearing aids includes Dynamic Noise Reduction, with Eargo tech which allows the devices to vary noise reduction based on environment. When the environment gets louder, noise reduction ramps up. These devices also change based on user preference. The "Flexi Fibers" hold the hearing aids in place, while the domes “increase the amount of ambient bass sounds and eliminate feedback. I understand very well how useful and life-changing these features are since my mother suffers from major hearing loss and will benefit her tremendously. However, the one road-block I see is the cost factor. Currently, Eargo Max is priced at $2,500 which I believe is quite too high and defeats the purpose of providing cost-effective and affordable products. Hoping to see the Industry ramping up to address this gap. 

To summarize, CES 2018 was a curtain raiser for millions of products, solutions, and technologies which created hope for a future that is beyond imagination. In my opinion, there is still a long way for the Industry stakeholders to meet the primary objectives of IoT which will redefine this entire universe. The one vertical which has gone mainstream is the Autonomous Vehicles or the Self-driving cars. The major tech giants such as Cisco, Nvidia, Intel, Amazon, Google, Tesla, Apple, GM, Toyota, and many others made announcements focusing their investments in this sector.

The Meltdown and Spectre microprocessor bugs not only compromise billions of desktops, laptops, servers, clouds, tablets and smartphones, they also put tens of billions more embedded, IoT, and control systems at risk.

A few days before Christmas holidays, I received an email from a customer that said “... I want to tell you that I have really appreciated your help, your professional approach and your “human touch”: they are as important as knowledge is …”.

Moved by the Christmas spirit that surround us these days, made me change my priorities of publishing the next articles and I decided to dedicate a few lines to what I consider a very important issue: What is the human touch value of the CEOs in the IoT?

I do not intend to convert this article into an analysis of the types of CEOs, or a list of the best CEOs of IoT companies (for that there will be time). 

My objective today is in making IoT´s CEOs aware, especially those of large multinationals, of their responsibility to print a human touch on their actions and decisions. Not only will the stability and quality of work of millions of people depend on them, but also the conservation of our planet in favourable conditions for future generations.

The Human touch of IoT´s CEOs to save the World

Global Warming is very real.  Even if greenhouse gas concentrations stabilized today, the planet would continue to warm by about 0.6°C over the next century because of greenhouses gases already in the atmosphere. Its effects are already so visible that no one doubts its catastrophic consequences.

We know that the IoT can help in many ways to monitor and control Global Warning, and there are many great stories of how companies are making use of IoT technology to help save water, money … and the planet. 

In  the article “3 ways businesses can use the internet of things to save the environment“, Jayraj Nair - Global Head of IoT, Vice President Wipro-, suggest  a few steps that business leaders could take to lessen the effects of these barriers and set their companies on the right path to become champions of a more sustainable and connected future.

1.       Emphasize digital citizenship and individual responsibility

2.       Share knowledge and resources across departments

3.       Collaborate to create guidelines for tech development

We should reward those IoT´s CEOs who follow the slogan “ We develop the IoT that Save the World!..

The Human touch of IoT´s CEOs to build ethic AI

When I wrote  “Internet of Things – Kings and Servants” I gave great importance to the CEOs visionaries of the companies that were destined to change the world of the 21st century. CEOs like Sundar Pichai (Google) or Satya Nadella (Microsoft) have been responsible from conceptual shift for their companies, moving from “mobile strategy” to “cloud and artificial intelligence”.

Could we avoid psychopath and sociopath robots? CEOs of the Tech Giants companies need to influence in developers of AI the human touch. We do not want to live with fear surrounding by not ethic AI machines and robots. 

IoT´s CEOs involved in Artificial Intelligence must believe that machines and robots will help us to be better people. They need to boost the challenge in our future society and make sure that their Robots and Artificial Intelligence not only pursue productivity and profit but also other values eg justice, opportunity, freedom, compassion.

The Human touch of IoT´s CEOs to ensure democracy

We cannot conceive democracy today without the free use of technology. Technology, on the other hand, that is more difficult to control by citizens. Is it possible to democratize the technology, not only the Internet of Things? Could we avoid that a handful of companies come to dominate the Technology? and therefore our Democracies.

The temptation of the power is great in the IoT´s CEOs of the companies that manipulate huge amount of data of the people, of the intelligent devices at their whim.

I thought at some point that the Countries could prevent the creation of these monsters, but their powers already transcend the States. I fear that the fight of egos, in the heights in which these CEOs live, give priority to the Highlander philosophy "Only one can be left!" And drag the dormant democracies for their technology into the vacuum of complacency.

Today more than ever, we need CEOs with a human touch that ensures the health of our democracies.

The Human touch of IoT´s CEOs to ensure equality of job opportunities

Which IoT companies have a culture that allow dissent between the CEOs and the employees? IoT´s CEOs need to understand that people are not going to do what they want them to do unless I engender equal commitment and passion on their part.

I have worked for many years in different technology companies, and I have regrettably proved that their business cultures, far from differentiating themselves, are more and more similar.

We all know cases of companies, including those of IoT, that abuse salaries of interns or inexperienced employees, but the problem of overqualification when applying to a new job is no less true. Many of us have heard numerous times: Sorry, you are overqualified. Not sure I can manage you.

I am convinced that a human touch on the part of the CEOs would help to correct these endemic problems of the current business culture. What are you waiting for?

The Human touch of CEOs to ensure a dignified life for the elderly

I was wondering a few years ago with the Smart Cities hype, How will be our life as retired workers in the Smart Cities we are building?.

In light of what I'm seeing, there are currently not many IoT´s CEOs that are worrying about the elderly. Of course, because, they consume less, they produce less, they do not understand the technology created for millennials or the digital native, the generations that is going to change the world.

Considering that all IoT´s CEOs, or at least that's what I want, will also be older people, a human touch in the investment of technology for the elderly will now make their lives more dignified in a few years.

Summary

In a time where digital premium on the physical, where business results are required not every quarter, but every day, in a time of robots, cryptocurrencies, virtual reality it is not easy to be a CEO with human touch. But to save the World, to make sure we build ethical AI, to ensure democracy in the technology, to ensure equality of job opportunities, to ensure a dignified life for the elderly, we need their human touch.

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With Internet of Things (IoT) progressively taking its strong hold in the industrial sector, let us find out how companies are making the most of it.  

Back in 2014, a report issued by the top management consultant company, Accenture predicted that by 2020 investment in the Industrial IoT would reach around $500 billion.  A combination of powerful data processing, cheap sensors, and machine learning has allowed the companies the leverage the Internet of Things (IoT) in industrial sector to make their industrial processes more efficient and significantly smarter than ever. 

Nowhere is IoT leveraged more so than in the rail industry, which is one of the most lucrative and profit-driven industries all over the world.  Previously rail operators would only be able to fix any problem that had visibly broken, however with the advent of IoT in industrial sector, the province of predictive maintenance has enabled operators to identify and fix any issue before services need to be stopped for the time being.  Today, it is increasingly common for all the other industries allowing companies to monitor and analyze data generated from the IoT devices, and if any changes found in data, companies can accurately predict future performance issues.  

Smarter Transportation 

It comes as no surprise that capturing, monitoring and analyzing of big data can provide industrial companies with a host of advantages. You might know that French rail provider SNCF is the biggest company that is trying to leverage big data in industrial IoT. They have started working on several projects that aim to capitalize on big data to achieve a number of things, including:  

• Predict maintenance requirements more accurately

• Integrate data from across the organization

• Improving visibility of asset health

• Reduce instances of unscheduled maintenance 

Smart Maintenance  

Smart maintenance has already shown itself in various early case studies on how to use data to make management of networks more efficient and smarter. For example, a Finnish company Sharper Shape has been using drones to map utility networks. They are leveraging big data, IoT and machine learning to identify those trees that are at high risk of falling onto the power lines. In an interview, the CEO of Finnish company Sharper Shape, Tero Heinonen said that using drones instead of humans to identify the trees that are at high risk of falling onto the power lines can cut costs by up to 30%. Moreover, drones can perform this task faster than humans.  

With the kind of predictive maintenance and monitoring programs discussed in this blog post, we can say that network faults will become a thing of the past. Don’t you think so? However, if you also want to be a part industrial IoT, learn IoT Training and Analytics online from a reputed institute. 

With Internet of Things (IoT) progressively taking its strong hold in the industrial sector, let us find out how companies are making the most of it.  

Back in 2014, a report issued by the top management consultant company, Accenture predicted that by 2020 investment in the Industrial IoT would reach around $500 billion.  A combination of powerful data processing, cheap sensors, and machine learning has allowed the companies the leverage the Internet of Things (IoT) in industrial sector to make their industrial processes more efficient and significantly smarter than ever.

Nowhere is IoT leveraged more so than in the rail industry, which is one of the most lucrative and profit-driven industries all over the world.  Previously rail operators would only be able to fix any problem that had visibly broken, however with the advent of IoT in industrial sector, the province of predictive maintenance has enabled operators to identify and fix any issue before services need to be stopped for the time being.  Today, it is increasingly common for all the other industries allowing companies to monitor and analyze data generated from the IoT devices, and if any changes found in data, companies can accurately predict future performance issues.  

Smarter Transportation

It comes as no surprise that capturing, monitoring and analyzing of big data can provide industrial companies with a host of advantages. You might know that French rail provider SNCF is the biggest company that is trying to leverage big data in industrial IoT. They have started working on several projects that aim to capitalize on big data to achieve a number of things, including:  

·         Predict maintenance requirements more accurately

·         Integrate data from across the organization

·         Improving visibility of asset health

·         Reduce instances of unscheduled maintenance

Smart Maintenance  

Smart maintenance has already shown itself in various early case studies on how to use data to make management of networks more efficient and smarter. For example, a Finnish company Sharper Shape has been using drones to map utility networks. They are leveraging big data, IoT and machine learning to identify those trees that are at high risk of falling onto the power lines. In an interview, the CEO of Finnish company Sharper Shape, Tero Heinonen said that using drones instead of humans to identify the trees that are at high risk of falling onto the power lines can cut costs by up to 30%. Moreover, drones can perform this task faster than humans.  

With the kind of predictive maintenance and monitoring programs discussed in this blog post, we can say that network faults will become a thing of the past. Don’t you think so? However, if you also want to be a part industrial IoT, learn IoT Training and Analytics online from a reputed institute. 

Bottom of Form

Take the customer preference data you've acquired from real time remote monitoring that's driving your sales and sell it to the manufacturers of those products because they want to know what customers want to buy.

Amid today’s digital era, many travel companies are still living in the “analog” world of developing relationships with customers. The “mass production-mass market” mindset that emerged out of industrial revolution has unfortunately survived through the advent and maturity of the World Wide Web.

Mass market mentality combined with lack of a data strategy heavily emphasizes products and services, putting the customer last. Most companies don’t go beyond mass communication with consumers, which results in one-way conversations.

Today’s customer is well-informed, leveraging social media to learn more about the product, seek recommendations/opinions, and provide product feedback. If companies have not leveraged data or digital capabilities to re-imagine the purchase path and inspire customers to buy their product or service, they are well behind the curve. PepsiCo is one company that has been successful in rethinking the role of the customer in a brand. LAY’S s “Do us a Flavor” campaign resulted in customers creating and voting for new flavors.

We are seeing a changing mindset in the travel and transportation industry. Uber and Airbnb are disrupting business models through customer-centric design, shared economy, and simplicity. To improve based on customer feedback, Airbnb's CEO used Twitter to ask users for product feedback.

Thanks to IoT, digital cloud technologies, and the declining cost of storage, data is collected from everywhere – internal systems, transactional systems, external (social media) sources, and devices.

However, in many cases we are seeing that data is not leveraged for better customization:

• Data is not consolidated and lives in silos.
• Only “structured” data is looked at.

Customers are to provide more personalization – offering the right product at the right time in the right situation. Customers expect the level of personalization provided by Netflix and Amazon in almost every only interaction, regardless of whether the company is in the retail, entertainment, or travel industry. When they experience features, such as a recommendation engine, they get to what they need faster and company revenues increase in turn.

If you notice one thing that’s common between an Uber, Airbnb, or Amazon for that matter, it is the platform. Platforms are becoming the core of the digital economy, and they enable enterprises to provide curated personalized experiences for their customers.

Every large enterprise is building a platform (Enterprise API) to encapsulate core business logic that can be served to upstream channels like mobile, websites, call center, and kiosks. These APIs get opened for external business consumption to build new business models and partnerships. Using Data Lake technology, these enterprises are able to build a data management platform that can aggregate, build, and enrich customer/consumer data. By applying big data technologies, machine learning, and advanced analytics, enterprises can build a 360-degree view of the customer.

This results in a customer-centric strategy. Customers expect to be put first and are demanding from travel companies. If they perceive that their airline or hotel chain of choice is behind the curve in personalization, they just might take their loyalty elsewhere. The cost of acquiring a new customer is at least four times more than keeping an existing customer. This, combined with the increase in revenue from up-selling and cross-selling that personalization provides, should put technology initiatives that increase personalization at the top of the list for any travel company.

Each year we like to go inside FreeWave and ask our team what the Industrial IoT forecast looks like for the upcoming year. Throughout 2017 we were hard at work developing some of our industry-leading Edge intelligence and industrial Wi-Fi products, so this year, instead of looking inward, we decided to take a peek around the world at 2018 IIoT predictions from some of the leading experts.

Network World

Based off a Forrester report, three immediate trends spring to the forefront: specialization, security, and Edge infrastructure. Taking a bird’s eye view, as the market proliferates, many Industrial IoT providers will no longer need to be a one-size-fits-all solution, instead being able to double down on proprietary technology that has a highly specific and specialized purpose. Edge Infrastructure, already one of the hottest sectors of IoT, will possibly determine the future of big data and predictive analytics, in turn driving machine learning and beyond. And then, of course, there is the security element.

As the domains of Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT) converge, the traditionally more vulnerable standards and practices of OT will take on more of an IT flavor, incorporating more hardened cybersecurity elements as IT managers (with security ALWAYS on their minds) take on more prominent roles in industrial operations and implement the next generation of IoT-ready devices and systems.

IDC

In early November, IDC put together a list of 10 predictions for IIoT covering myriad facets of the industry, including:

• As much as a 25 percent increase in security spending
• 10 percent growth in IoT sensors on Blockchain distributed ledgers
• In three years more than $1 trillion of enterprise IoT project investments will be built on net new technology spending

These are interesting predictions and fall in line with the general trend of the industry over the last five years. But there was one prediction that caught our eye:

• “By 2020, IT spend on Edge Infrastructure will reach up to 18 percent of the total spend on IoT Infrastructure, driven by deployments of converged IT/OT systems that reduce the time to value of data collected from their connected devices.”

Essentially, IDC is predicting that in two years Edge intelligence will use nearly 20 percent of the industry’s total IoT spend. This Edge intelligence will be driven by IT/OT convergence that enables faster data transmission via Fog Computing, enabling predictive analytics and real-time data monitoring. This is a significant note, as many companies are focused almost exclusively on figuring out how to transmit data from the Edge in usable packets.

Maciej Kranz, vice president of strategic innovation at Cisco

Kranz wrote the book on IoT (literally, check it out: Building the Internet of Things), and he tends to view it from more of a business standpoint. However, as more companies attempt to jump into the IoT fray, taking a strong – and long – business perspective could be the difference between success and failure.

In his ten predictions, Kranz finds similar footing with many analysts and thought leaders (paraphrasing):

• IoT will become the key security domain as organizations ‘finally begin to take IoT security seriously.’
• IoT will revolutionize data analytics as technology shifts to dynamic or real-time analytics and streaming data using AI and machine learning
• The focus of IoT will move from driving efficiency to creating new business value as companies use IoT to create new value propositions: in manufacturing mass customization, and more mass personalization.

To us, however, the most interesting prediction offered up by Kranz has to do with standardization:

• “We will see an industry-wide, accelerated move to open standards, open architectures and interoperability.”

At FreeWave, we have been huge proponents of opening up architectures to make the creation of IIoT software applications easier and more accessible to critical industries. Currently, many IIoT software needs require sophisticated and complex development chops. But, with the rise of NODE Red – and with the growth of language agnostic hardware – development and interoperability opportunities are opening up for everyone.

2018 could be a watershed year for the Industrial IoT. We highlighted three analyst and thought leader predictions here, but many carried the same tenor: security, analytics and proliferation will drive the growth of the industry over the next few years.

We’d love to hear from the community as well: what predictions do you have for IIoT in 2018?

By capturing real time inventory data from vending machines, smart shelves and other instrumented sources of retail data, you learn customer preferences which let you quickly manipulate product mix to increase sales.

There is a lot of talk, and, indeed, hype, these days about the internet of things. But what is often overlooked is that the internet of things is also an internet of shared services and shared data. What’s more, we are becoming too heavily reliant on public internet connectivity to underpin innovative new services.

Take this as an example. Back in April, Ford Motor Company, Starbucks and Amazon announced and demonstrated an alliance that would allow a consumer to use Alexa to order and pay for their usual coffee selection from their car. Simply saying, “Alexa: ask Starbucks to start my order,” would trigger the sequence of events required to enable you to drive to the pickup point and collect your already-paid-for coffee with no waiting in line.

Making that transaction happen behind the scenes involves a complex integration of the business processes of all the companies involved. Let’s be clear: this is about data protection. For this series of transactions to be successfully handled, they must be able to share customer payment data, manage identity and authentication, and match personal accounts to customer profiles.

Because all of that critical data can be manipulated, changed or stolen, cyberattacks pose significant data protection risks for nearly any entity anywhere. The ambition of some of these consumer innovations makes an assumption that the “secure” network underpinning this ecosystem for the transfer of all that valuable personal data is the public internet. And that’s the point – it’s not secure.

As we’ve talked about previously on Syniverse's blog Synergy, the public internet poses a systemic risk to businesses and to confidential data. In short, when we are dealing on a large scale with highly sensitive data, the level of protection available today for data that, at any point, touches the public internet is substantially inadequate.

And this alliance between Ford and Starbucks is just one example of the type of innovation, across many different industry and consumer sectors, that we can expect to see a lot of in the very near future. These services will connect organizations that are sharing data and information about businesses and about consumers – about their purchase history, their preferences and requirements, and also about their likely future needs. This is potentially a very convenient and desired service from a consumer’s point of view, but at what cost?

We need security of connectivity, security from outside interference and the security of encrypted transfer and protection for our personal and financial data. And we need to be able to verify the protection of that data at all times by ensuring attribution and identity – both concepts we’ll explore more deeply in an upcoming blog post. And that’s a level of security that the public internet simply cannot provide.

Last month, an internet-based global ransomware attack took down systems and services all over the world – affecting sensitive personal healthcare data in the U.K. in particular.

Whether it is personal health records, financial records, data about the movement of freight in a supply chain, or variations in energy production and consumption, these are digital assets. Businesses, institutions and government bodies all over the world have billions of digital assets that must be constantly sent to and from different parties. And those assets require the type of high-level data protection that is not currently possible because of the systemic risk posed by the insecure public internet.

As mentioned in my last blog post on Synergy, there is an alternative. Some companies using private IP networks were able to carry on regardless throughout the high-profile cyberattacks that have been capturing headlines in the last year. That’s because those companies were not reliant on the public internet. Instead, they were all using what we are beginning to term “Triple-A” networks on which you can specify the speed and capacity of your Access to the network while guaranteeing the Availability of your connection. What’s more, on a Triple-A network, Attribution is securely controlled, so you know who and what is accessing your network and the level of authority granted both to the device accessing the network and to its user.

The public internet cannot provide or compete with a Triple-A level of security, and nor should we expect it to. It cannot live up to the stringent data protection requirements necessary for today’s critical digital assets. We cannot remain content that so much infrastructure, from banking, to transport and to power supplies, relies on a network with so many known vulnerabilities. And we must consider whether we want to carry on developing an industrial internet of things and consumer services on a public network.

We will continue to explore these issues on this blog, to highlight different approaches, and examine the requirements of the secure networks of the future. And in the process, we’ll take a look at the work being done to build more networks with a Triple-A approach.

Let’s just say it: The public internet is great, but it’s an unfit, wide-open place to try to conduct confidential business.

More and more, the public nature of the internet is causing business and government leaders to lose sleep. The global ransomware attacks this year that crippled infrastructure and businesses across Europe clearly shows the concern is not only justified but also growing.

As a result, internet and privacy regulations, like GDPR and PSD2, are front and center as governments around the world increasingly look at the web and how it’s being used. This is creating competing and contradictory objectives.

On the one hand, governments want to protect consumer privacy and data; on the other, they want to be able to monitor what certain folks are up to on the internet. And in both cases, they can at least claim to be looking to protect people.

Regardless of the difficulty of the task, there is no doubt the big governments are circling and considering their options.

Speaking in Mexico in June, Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel touted the need for global digital rules, like those that exist for financial markets, and that those rules need to be enforceable through bodies like the World Trade Organization.

From a business perspective, I can applaud the ambition, but it does seem a little like trying to control the uncontrollable. The truth is that the public internet has come to resemble the old Wild West. It is an increasingly dangerous place to do business, with more than its fair share of rustlers, hustlers, and bandits to keep at bay.

The public internet connects the world and nearly all its citizens. When it comes to connecting businesses, national infrastructures, and governments themselves, trying to regulate the Wild West of the public internet simply isn’t an option. Instead, it’s time to take a step back and look for something different.

We believe organizations that want to conduct business, transfer data, monitor equipment and control operations globally – with certainty, security and privacy – should not be relying on the public internet. The sheer number of access points and endpoints creates an attack surface that is simply too wide to protect, especially with the increased trending of fog and edge networks that we’ve discussed on previous Syniverse blog posts.

Just last week, the online gaming store CEX was hacked. In an instant, around two million customers found their personal information and financial data had been exposed. Consumers in America, the U.K. and Australia are among those affected. As I said, the public internet presents an ever-widening attack surface.

Recently on the Syniverse blog, we’ve been talking about the need to develop private, closed networks where businesses, national utilities and governments can truly control not just access, but activity. Networks that are always on and ones where the owners always know who is on them and what they are doing. Networks that are private and built for an exact purpose, not public and adaptable.

Trying to apply or bolt on rules, regulations and security processes after the fact is never the best approach.  Especially if you are trying to apply them to a service that is omnipresent and open to anybody 24/7.

When we look at the public internet, we see fake actors, state actors, hackers and fraudsters roaming relatively freely. We see an environment where the efforts to police that state might raise as many issues as they solve.

Instead, it’s time for global businesses to build a new world. It’s time to leave the old Wild West and settle somewhere safer. It’s time to circle the wagons around a network built for purpose. That is the future.

Digital transformation is no longer a buzzword. No industry is left behind. 

The best results will occur when technology and humans collaborate to create an entire ecosystem, which technology alone cannot achieve.

Just before 2007, we didn't have access to smartphones like iPhone or social media apps like Instagram, Whatsapp and even email was much more limited only to desktops. 

It is Digital or Die. You are an easy prey if you don’t change.