Voice of the DBA

Tag: IoT

  • IoT Increases Efficiency

    There is no shortage of articles about problems with IoT, especially with consumer based IoT products. In fact, many of the ideas and sales are gimmicky with dubious value for me, but I know what some people get excited that they can change their home thermostat from the car or have the fridge send them an inventory, or even have a tracker on their keys.

    There certainly are some great implementation, especially in healthcare, but I think there is a lot of IoT that can really help in business, some of which will create new opportunity for us as data professionals. As the costs for sensors come down and their capabilities rise, I’m sure more people will come up with interesting ways that they can be used.

    I spent quite a few years earlier in life working in the restaurant industry, and I’ve spent my whole life shopping in grocery stores for ingredients to cook with. I know margins are low in these businesses, and there is a lot of waste. When I ran across this article on using IoT in the food industry, I was skeptical that it would become commonplace, but I think I might be wrong. Keeping food fresh has a noticeable impact on profits and sales, and cheap sensors that can help measure data is important in all stages. From the supply chain to your fridge, if data can inform you of those foods that are nearing the end of their lifetime, perhaps you’d make different decisions in shipping, in promotions in restaurants, or even in the recipes you pick for tonight.

    And I’m sure there are some of you that would love to chat about the source and age of the lettuce in your salad at a restaurant. That’s not for me, but IoT is going to change our lives in many ways and give us lots of data with which to work.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

     

  • Securing the Things

    I would venture to guess that a lot of the data that will be produced in the next few years will come from various “things” that are implemented by companies, users, and governments. We tend to refer to the Internet of Things (IoT) as those computing devices that are small, specialized, and connected computing device that sends data elsewhere. Sensors, special purpose devices, and more make of the IoT spectrum, including many industrial and manufacturing hardware.

    Computers grew by leaps and bounds from approximately 250 worldwide in 1955 to one million in 1980 and 30 million by 1986. In 2015, the world saw 238 million computers sold worldwide. If we add smartphones, we had around 120 million sold in 2007 and 1.4 billion sold in 2015. Tablets add to this, but really, the large market is going to be IoT devices. 15 billion connected in 2015 with an estimate of 75 billion by 2025. I would wager that is going to be a low prediction.

    One of the major concerns with these devices is security, and with good reason. There have been hacks against many of these devices, and few have been designed or sold with security in mind. Quite a few devices assume a strong network perimeter inside of an organization, but history has shown us that these barriers aren’t always secure. What might be more disconcerting is that many of the hacks originate inside of the network boundary, whether from insiders or compromised devices. There’s a nice write up on the need for security with IoT. Microsoft recently proposed that we regulate privacy and security for the IoT devices.

    Many of these devices will generate data that we will use as data professionals. In fact, I expect a tremendous amount of data to be generated. If devices are hacked, we may end up with lots of suspect data. Even devices are secure, they may fail or have intermittent errors. How to we detect errant data and remove it from our data sets? How can we be sure anomalies aren’t just problems or failures in the device (or network)? These will be challenges for us moving forward.

    I don’t know that I think specific regulation is required, but I’d like to see some sort of framework devised. I think encryption should be required, as well as guidelines for the security of connections and data management. Perhaps a list of valid technologies could be used, growing and changing over time, including removing older items that might be outdated. For example, DES shouldn’t be allowed in any new deployments, and it really should be removed from old ones, though with some grace period. That means a regular investment in software development and upgrades that evolves our systems over time. Especially with regard to data security.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.4MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • IoT Pros and Cons

    The Internet of Things is coming, or maybe it’s a wave that’s growing underneath us right now. It certainly hasn’t crested if that’s the case, and I expect that we’ll see more and more devices, sensors, and applications coming in the next decade. We’ll get larger and smaller devices, commercial and industrial tools, some amazing innovations and some silly ones that will make most people roll their eyes.

    I ran across an article with some pros and cons from the general perspective. Certainly security is a huge concern, and one that isn’t well addressed by many organizations. In fact, many of the demos of the Azure IoT hub don’t do a great job of showcasing security. I think the Azure IoT Hub is a great idea, with some well thought out security measures, but developers need to build in habits early, and certainly include them in their applications. Let’s leave aside security for a moment and stipulate that it is, and likely always will, be a concern and issue.

    What about the data perspective of IoT? The age of new sensors and devices mean a glut of data, perhaps an overload. We may get a scale of data that we don’t expect and need to plan for more TB or PB sized databases. Those are serious challenges for any organization, and likely we’ll need archival plans to remove old data, or at least ensure we don’t have to scan it for queries. We might even need some sort of governors that prevent the errant “select * from table” queries that try to query 100 billion rows.

    We also may see crazy rates of data acquisition as well. One of the strengths of some NoSQL platforms is that they handle quick streaming sets quicker than relational engines. In fact, in some domains we might not even want to bother storing all the data we can and may need to process this as we get the data, only storing certain samples or ranges. I worked with a stock market application once and the streaming of prices was enough to overwhelm our SQL Server until we learned to limit the data we actually needed to store in the system.

    There’s also the chance we’ll get new, or different types of data that we aren’t sure of the value. Data that might not seem like there is an obvious use for it, but we’re just gathering the bits because a sensor or device captures them. This is where I see more intelligent analysis, more of the “data science” being used. Most of us won’t know how to create these queries, but we certainly will know how to implement and run them, which is a much simpler process. This also means we might need to learn more about to partition, archive, or otherwise move some data of OLTP type, transactional systems to help manage our loads.

    I think IoT is somewhat scary, but also very exciting. New types of data, new applications, new uses for data, which will make our jobs very interesting in the coming decade.

    Steve Jones

  • The Great and Powerful Internet of Things

    Will we have the IoUT (Internet of Useful Things? As some have said, the IoS (Internet of Sh**e) is really what we have because of the poorly built, poorly secured hardware and software devices. It seems that almost every month I see new devices introduced in the consumer space, most of which aren’t well designed for widespread use, and certainly aren’t very durable. There are, of course, exceptions, including a few I’d like, but for the most part, the rush to market means that many of the IoT devices sold aren’t much better than most of the home built Kickstarter projects. That’s not to say Kickstarter (or Indiegogo or any other site) doesn’t produce good products, just that some aren’t.

    We’ve got an infographic from Website Guide today that you can examine. It’s an interesting item, which is why I published it. There are a lot of great possible applications for IoT style devices. Plenty of businesses and industries are seeing the benefits of using sensors and devices that are (semi-) smart and connected to a network. Using well written applications, companies can come up with new ways of gathering and using information. When these systems are well designed, this can result in lower costs, higher sales (or usage), happier customers, or all three.

    As you scroll down the infographic, you’ll see the dark side of IoT, which is getting more press all the time. Security is the number one concern, as far, far too many devices don’t include the necessary security to protect either the device or the end user. I did watch an IoT demo at Live!360 last year using the Azure IoT hub, and was glad there was some authentication and ability to shut down devices that might be compromised or misbehaving, but far too many IoT systems aren’t well secured.

    That’s disconcerting for me as a database professional. I expect that more and more companies will use IoT in some way. I’d even like to find time for some IoT sensors around the ranch, tracking horses and ensuring they’re all walking around every day. The thing that concerns me is what happens when someone finds ways to hijack or hack a device? Even sensors could be hijacked. What if you’re processing temperature information in dynamic SQL and someone decides to heat and cool the sensor to create certain values? Are you sure your database isn’t vulnerable?

    These concerns leave out the potential for the misuse of any data that’s collected about users, especially if users aren’t aware of what’s being collected and its use. With so many ways of collecting data now, I’m not even sure that anyone has a good handle on all the data collected about them, not to mention how it’s being stored, secured, and used.

    I think there’s incredible potential for some great IoT applications and data in the future. All the forecasts and spending seem to point towards the next 5-10 years being a period where there will be an explosion of the number of types devices built and deployed. Those devices will produce a tremendous amount of data for us to manage in databases. We will have big challenges in storing, indexing, managing streams, and certainly, the pruning of old data.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 5.4MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn