Picture your life without the Internet. Did this bring shivers down your spine? It did for me. Today, everything is connected to the Internet. From kitchen appliances to remotes, everything is reliant on connectivity. But how do they connect? How does Alexa turn off your lights?
Now imagine that it all gets hacked. Hold on, there’s no need to use imagination. It just happened last week. Over 83 Million devices were hacked because of an IoT bug.
“Vulnerability is lurking in numerous types of smart devices—including security cameras, DVRs, and even baby monitors—that could allow an attacker to access live video and audio streams over the internet and even take full control of the gadgets remotely. What's worse, it's not limited to a single manufacturer; it shows up in a software development kit that permeates more than 83 million devices, and over a billion connections to the internet each month.” - Wired
IoT makes connecting our smart devices possible through a system of interrelated computing devices. Yet it also makes it very dangerous. As more devices are activated online under centralized services, the easier it gets for attackers to take control of your data, privacy, and even put your or the life of your loved ones at risk.
Most of these devices are built by tech supergiants like Amazon, IBM, and Google. All the data which we feed into these devices go straight to these corporations, which in turn makes them earn large amounts of profits. This means that these 3 supergiants control an outsized portion of our devices and our personal data. They have the centralized authority to run these devices and collect our data without our knowledge (Yeah, we all ticked that privacy policy agreement!).
All of our highly sensitive data, such as the videos from our home cameras, are owned by institutions, opening them to any kind of manipulation without our consent. We are one step away from being hacked and potentially losing everything.
“Ring security cameras accessed maliciously through unauthorized usage of login credentials” New York Times
What’s the solution to this? How do we reclaim control over the devices we use? Well, we aren't the only ones who have wondered about this. Some of our fellow humans have thought of a solution and implemented it. There are two platforms poised to take the lead: IOTEX and IOTA. While IOTA is still in its rather early test net stage, IOTEX is in full production and already has an award-winning product, UCAM, a blockchain security camera that is already on the market.
The main goal of these decentralized platforms is to make sure their users have control over their own data and the value it generates in a very secure way. Their mission is simply to give all the power back to users so that they can regain their trust which was long lost since the myriad cases of data breaching began. A vision, that IoTeX refers to as, “Building The Connected World”
Centralized structures for IoT data processing, such as Cisco or Azure, have several other shortcomings like the risk of loss of data, high costs, slower processing speed due to high traffic, and a lack of transparency, to name some. Efficient data processing, decision making, and resource utilization require new approaches such as a decentralized IoT platform. But for decentralized platforms to work in an efficient way they must have:
Multi-network approach: an IoT platform is destined to connect devices regardless of the underlying technology. Since different devices need different solutions, the platform must be designed uniquely for every constraint which can connect with each other. Scalable and interoperable implementation: As the conditions and expectations of IoT application domains may dynamically change over time, an adaptive IoT architecture should recognize and react to these changes promptly.
The IOTEX platform understands this and hence works the same way. They aim to build a root blockchain for security, governance of the network, and transparency with some side-chains that can carry out individual functions. For the second feature, IOTEX has come up with a very unique characteristic. For the first time, real-world data can be connected to the dApps on their platform, which many experts believe will be seen down the line as a huge game-changer.
In addition to this, both IOTEX and IOTA have their own set of tokens, IOTX and IOTA respectively. The IOTX token fuels the IOTEX network by instilling economic and reputational incentives to ensure its network is governed and maintained in a decentralized fashion, while the IOTA token aims to allow users and machines to exchange data or services in the future.
Considering all how far blockchain has moved in terms of already implemented and optimal features, blockchain has established itself as a leader in the IoT and Smart Device space to reclaim user data privacy and protection. In a time where hacks are popping up in the news almost every day, it is more crucial than ever for teams to be working round the clock to solve this issue. As we speak, more innovative ideas are being created and more dApps are being developed in blockchain ecosystems. As the IoT and Smart Device space continues to flourish, I am excited to see what lies ahead and how it will revolutionize the way we view the connected future of devices.