Strong Security Called Critical at IoT Event

Parks finds 76 percent of broadband households have big concerns over security and privacy when using their connected devices. The concerns “have a direct effect on consumer confidence, and they threaten to derail the growth of individual brands and the smart home market as a whole,” Russell said. Forty percent of broadband households in Q3 reported some kind of privacy or security problem in the past year with a connected device, Russell said.

Stakeholders share responsibility, said Jim Hunter, chief scientist/technology evangelist at Greenwave Systems, a software and services company for cable companies and telcos. Consumers have to know what they’re getting into, he said. “Certain companies are putting passwords out in the open again,” Hunter said, and standard operating procedures aren’t being taken into account. Greenwave is part of the Internet of Things Consortium’s efforts to make stakeholders aware of their responsibility and what each link in the chain needs to know about security “so at least you have a shot at not getting hacked,” he said.

Most consumers, if they think about security, “don’t think they’re the ones who should be in charge of it,” said Bruce Snell, Intel Security cybersecurity and privacy director. Parks’ Russell called it a poor business model to “ask consumers to secure their own devices when it’s your revenue that depends on whether they do it or don’t do it.” Snell said Intel is looking at consumer-friendly versions of security solutions it provides at the enterprise level that would allow consumers to have access to similar technologies to secure their home, communication for IoT devices and their mobile devices. The challenges are to get consumers to care and to make it easy enough for mainstream users to implement security solutions, Snell said.

The tech industry is “not leading by example” by putting out products with “admin” as the default password, Greenwave’s Hunter said. Ayla Networks Chief Technology Officer Adrian Caceres said the whole chain has to be secured, through regulations and industry initiatives.

Hunter said ethical questions about smart home security updates will lead to legal questions. Governments also will become involved, he said, as “information is being taken from consumers.” There's going to be “backlash,” Hunter said. “It starts with an irresponsibility” about getting a product to market quickly, he said. “The legal sector is going to have a field day with the opportunity from IoT.”

Russell posited a possible FCC role or an industry certification process. Hunter offered the possibility of a Verisign-type validation for smart home devices, giving consumers the same peace of mind for connected devices as they have ordering products over the Internet from a website with a Verisign SSL certificate. He said it would be a seal of validity to consumers for privacy, security and a product’s ability to “work well with others.” On the legal side, said Ayla’s Caceres, whose customers ship products to over 100 countries, laws have to be “consistent.”

Consumers are generally aware of hazards of public Wi-Fi but assume they’re safe when banking from home on their own networks, Snell said. As consumers start adding more IoT devices with insecure passwords and become “easily hackable,” he said, the once-safe home network “is becoming less secure.” Intel’s challenge is how to convey dangers to the average consumer “without sounding like the sky is falling,” Snell said. “If you go too far, a lot of people will see through it, and say, ‘Oh, you’re just trying to scare me to buy more upgrades.’” Security threats are constantly changing, Snell said. “Once you start knowing too much, you can’t sleep at night.” But he said “a lot of it is safe.”

Caceres repeated the need for end-to-end security. Consumers aren’t going to stop using Wi-Fi at Starbucks or “not use their cellphone on the street,” he said.

Home Security

Earlier Tuesday, Comcast's Daniel Herscovici said customers also are adding physical security. The general manager of Comcast’s Xfinity Home said peace of mind has to enter into the mix to boost adoption of smart home systems. “How do we get past the 1 percent of people in broadband that might have a connected thermostat, or the 3 percent that might have a connected thermostat,” and push that number to 20-40 percent of U.S. households, he asked. Herscovici said home security needs to evolve to “unification of life safety and peace of mind as a service experience” delivered by devices or interactive capabilities.

Comcast forecasts the connected home market will double in the next 12 months. Herscovici said there's a “vertical rebellion” as the number of devices per household grows, each with its own app, login and user experience. “There’s only so many apps or so many control capabilities that you can tolerate as one individual,” he said. That tolerance shrinks “the more you talk about the mass market,” Herscovici said. Industry’s answer was to create different platforms made up of devices and services, but platforms added a cost layer, Herscovici said. “The road is littered with the failed platforms that have existed over the past couple of years and some that have been recently shut down and caused some consumer angst,” he said. “No one wants to pay $10 a month for the privilege of paying $500 a month for the privilege of getting a service.”

Comcast’s pitch is to use the home gateway it supplies to broadband customers as a way to remove “the friction” of consumers having to shop for another device and install it. Consumers want a “Good Housekeeping” seal of approval that certifies a product works, which, he said, is what Comcast created in its Works with Xfinity Home program.

In Q&A, an audience member asked how Comcast would handle patches for software updates. Herscovici compared Comcast's approach to how Apple handles patches to apps in its store. “We would manage software patches to devices in our ecosystem,” he said. He imagined a world where “a company doesn’t issue a software patch without going through our test and approval process.” He said “it’s not going to be perfect” and Comcast would manage that process with its partners

In response to a question on how Comcast can compete in the connected home platform market with Amazon and Google and their larger customer bases, Herscovici called the Internet companies “frenemies.” He said Xfinity integrates with Google’s Nest thermostat. He envisioned Echo being one of the interfaces for home control.

Triple Play 'Dead'

Cablevision doesn’t want to go the way of Kodak, which didn’t see changes coming in the imaging market, said Executive Vice President-Operations Rob Comstock in a keynote. “The triple play is dead,” and customers want “a different suite of services,” he said.

Cable companies are “at the bottom of the scale” in customer satisfaction ratings -- even “below utilities,” said Comstock. “That’s telling us we have to do things differently.” On the cable industry’s must-do list to improve its standing with customers: (1) simplify video, delivering choice to consumers in a way that’s easy to consume and economically attractive, (2) make sure connectivity works “when, where they want to connect" to the Internet and (3) “deliver great service,” he said. Video, which has become “complicated” with over-the-top services, “is only going to increase in complexity," Comstock said. “Imagine if you could get all of that content -- whatever you wanted to watch -- with your remote control, or better yet, with voice activation.” Consumers wouldn’t have to use different hardware, change inputs or plug in passwords, he said. “It doesn’t matter where it comes from; it just shows up and you can watch it.”

Addressing high cable subscription costs for people who watch only a few channels, Comstock talked about cable providers’ minimum-carry obligations that prohibit “skinny bundles.” As service providers, cable companies “don’t want to be iTunes,” which, he said, disrupted the music industry model with a la carte offerings where consumers once had to buy an entire CD if they wanted one song. Profit in the music industry has been “cut in half,” and cable doesn’t want to go the way of the record store, he said: But cable must “drive and support flexibility for customers” so they can buy “what they’re watching vs. having to pay for channels they’re not watching.” On buffering interrupting the streaming experience, he said that “connectivity has to be ubiquitous.” It’s easy for today’s broadband household to tally 20 connected devices, including smartphones, tablets, game consoles, PCs and streaming media players, so “the connection has to be sound,” Comstock said. Cable needs to improve service, which will drive loyalty and make an impact on business, he said. “We’re at a crossroads,” he said of cable. “We have to innovate for the benefit of the customer.”