|
|
 |
Australia's IoT Security Code of Practice
|
On November 19, the Australian government released, for a public consultation period ending March 1, a draft of a voluntary Code of Practice: Securing the Internet of Things for Consumers. The code include 13 principles, covering such practices as password rules, vulnerability disclosure, periodic software and firmware updates, etc.
This voluntary compliance approach contrasts with that of California, among others. In that state, a law defining "reasonable security measures" that must be met by all devices sold there comes into force on January 1, 2020. That law has been criticized as superficial. It does not specify what "reasonable measures" are, except in one area: it prohibits the typical current practice of delivering all devices with the same default password, and allowing the consumer not to change it. See this ZDNet article.
|
|
Office 365 Message Encryption
|
Microsoft will soon roll out new features for Office 365 Message Encryption (OME). This may not concern many of you, who may not use Outlook or who do it through your company's own Exchange server. But it highlights the fact that email authenticity and security is still work in progress, as we all know from the size of our spam folder. For an overview, see this LinkedIn post from our partner Matt Tinney from Windows Management Experts Inc.
|
|
Factors in Data-Driven Innovation
|
In a CIO Magazine article entitled "5 factors that will shape data-driven innovation in 2020," Martin de Saulles explores the impacts and challenges of "the central role of data in driving innovation across many industrial sectors." He sees the following five key issues:
- Legal constraints (European Union GDPR, California's CCPA) in what data is collected and how to ensure informed consent.
- The social and political mood shift against large companies that accumulate and exploit consumer data (e.g., the GAFA: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) and the potential for a forced breakup of some of them.
- Uncertainty in the valuation of companies (Uber, Lyft, WeWork...), balanced by enthusiasm for digital healthcare companies.
- Advances in Artificial Intelligence, especially Machine Learning.
- The emergence of "data markets" such as Terbine, Dawex, Caruso, and now the AWS Data Exchange by Amazon.
|
|
Private 5G Networks for Industrial Automation |
There are all sorts of reports out about the future of fifth-generation (5G) networks. One particular report from Yahoo Finance, otherwise hard to read because of its telecom jargon, singles out an interesting and rarely mentioned use: private 5G networks for industrial automation. The higher bandwidth and small cell size of 5G is suitable for such uses. This specific market is predicted to surpass $3 billion (annual, worldwide) by 2024.
Credits to the Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA) for mentioning this in their newsletter. |
|
Contactless Fingerprint Access Control
|
IDEMIA, the company formed from the merger of smart card manufacturer Oberthur Technologies with Safran Identity and Security (previously known as Morpho), has posted a slick video about their physical access control system, which is based on fingerprints but does not require placing your fingers on the glass pane of a reader. Instead, you can just pass your hand through the reader without touching it. As a result, the reading should be faster, would not leave smudges on the glass, and would not risk spreading skin-borne bacteria from one user to another.
|
|
|
Seen Recently...
|
|
"What I like about LaTeX so much is that it brings the joy of debugging code to the fun process of writing a paper."
(if you didn't catch the sarcasm, look at
this example of a "simple" LaTeX document)
|
|
Happy Holidays!
|
We wish our readers a joyous holiday season and a prosperous New Year. Since New Year's day is in the middle of the week this time, issue 255 of the KIT will be sent out on Monday, January 6.
|
|
|
