Page 33 - FCW, Nov/Dec 2017

Special Report
The concept of connected devices is nothing new. As the Defense Department CIO’s office notes in its internet-of-things policy recommendations, DOD “has been using automated sensors and controls for over a century and connecting them to computers for decades.”
What is new is the scale of connectivity. “Millions of IoT devices are installed in DOD facilities, vehicles and medical devices,” said Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Jamie Davis.
And although the military might be ahead of the curve, it’s hardly alone in embracing IoT. Local governments are pushing smart-city technologies, the Department of Homeland Security is deploying sensors along the country’s borders, and a wide range of agencies are bringing IoT to their buildings,
vehicle fleets and supply chains. (The stories that follow offer just a sampling of those efforts.)
That diversity of use cases, in fact, points to an important clarification: IoT is not a technology but rather a principle that blends everything from cloud to mobile to advanced analytics to blockchain.
“The first step is understanding that a lot of the emerging technology... is very much interconnected,” said Marlon Attiken, IBM Global Business Service’s Watson IoT lead. “And I think as agencies start looking at this technology, they’re going to see that.”
Federal Emergency Management Agency CIO Adrian Gardner agreed. “IoT is the next big thing,” he said at FCW’s IoT Workshop in July, “but it’s not the only big thing.”
Standards are still evolving, and there are security risks to be addressed as well. As internet pioneer Vint Cerf noted at an IoT event earlier this year, a secure device “needs to be able to reject attempts to access it...to collect data from it or to control it — except from parties it can authenticate.”
And as David Egts, chief tech- nologist for Red Hat’s Public Sector organization, told FCW, “there aren’t a lot of incentives for people to develop long-term support for IoT devices.”
The biggest hurdle, however, is the data. Gardner said the government already struggles with data overload. As IoT systems capture ever more information, “the ability to make sense of it and choose the right data source is going to be one of our challenges.”
— Troy K. Schneider
VALERY BROZHINSKY/SHUTTERSTOCK/FCW STAFF
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