4 Ways You Can Reinvent Smart Home Appliance Without Looking Like An Amateur

Roomba maps houses -- that the spatial dimensions between furniture and other items will be valuable to some of the players fighting to control the home that is smart. But, iRobot "has not had any conversations with other companies about selling data," said Colin Angle, the firm's CEO. The Dangers of Cloud Storage Data accumulated by smart appliances "is not safe if it's sent off to the cloud," said Michael Patterson, CEO of Plixer. There will be 220 million smart voice-controlled devices globally by 2021, IHS Markit's Kozak said. It signifies a danger to national security and the integrity of associations, Scott cautioned. Reaping the Rewards Amazon's Echo along with Google's Home voice-activated speakers currently track and collect information about users through various home appliances and other products, as do manufacturers of clever TVs. Consumers who wish to maintain their personally identifiable data secure shouldn't invest in appliances that are Internet-capable, Patterson cautioned. "No IoT device is safe from a data compromise." Add artificial intelligence, large data calculations and machine learning to the combination, and the bad guys can start "massive hyperfocused campaigns against specific high-value sensitive targets," he pointed out. "Adversaries can craft personalized social engineering lures related to targets' browsing patterns, interests, profession and vices, for instance, and therefore bypass the cybersecurity and cyber-hygiene reflexes that typically thwart 86 percent of social engineering programs." However, from discussions with device manufacturers and cybersecurity experts, "data collected by smart home devices will not be available to just any third party," IHS Markit's Kozak told TechNewsWorld. Data collection is trivial, Kozak pointed out. Reward cards, gym trackers and smartphones most importantly collect user data. The Threat to Security and Privacy "iRobot is committed to the security of our customers' information, which we consider very seriously," he said. "We build security directly into the product development process from the start, in the right time of ideation." Both the Roomba robots and iRobot's network architecture "are continually reviewed by several third-party security bureaus," Angle pointed out. We have a no-compromise attitude when it comes to product security." Anyone can collect an number of information on anyone else, just by scouring search engines on the Web. Insert in data gathered by house appliances and other gadgets, and data on consumers' electricity consumption patterns gathered by smart meters, and it's possible to get a very granular picture of what's going on in someone's home. Additionally, manufacturers of smart devices who collect data "don't act on the data, and even more suggest they ... aggregate it," he noted. This trend could lead to serious threats to consumers' privacy and security. Baby monitors have been accessed by hackers, for instance. The United States National Security Agency has made no bones about its openness to tap the data made available by appliances and the Internet of Things. "iRobot will never sell customer data," he told TechNewsWorld. IRobot addresses consumer IoT "with the fundamental principles of security: secure data at rest, secure data in transit, secure execution, and secure updates," he explained. Smart home appliances and gadgets store the data they gather in the cloud, which is not inviolate. The Swedish government recently faced an upheaval following the discovery that all Swedish citizens' information had been leaked after it was moved to a cloud operate by IBM, a firm. The authorities replaced two of its ministers in an effort to quell the uproar that was resulting. The current rumor that iRobot had participated in talks with Apple, Amazon and Google parent Alphabet to market the data its Roomba vacuum cleaner gathers caused widespread privacy concerns. "The widespread collection, insecure storage, negligent exchange, and irresponsible usage of consumer metadata poses a direct and hyper-evolving threat to consumers, website (get redirected here) government officials, and critical infrastructure owners and operators," he told TechNewsWorld. "The ease with which an attacker can harvest and collect demographic and psychographic data on targets is astounding," said James Scott, senior fellow at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology. Malware diagnostic technologies from security providers "are not a surefire defense against targeted attacks," he told TechNewsWorld. "Nothing short of unplugging from the Internet can keep your data safe." Data collection is meant to provide an extra revenue stream for your manufacturer or service supplier, as well as improve the consumer's experience, said Blake Kozak, chief analyst at IHS Markit. That is the rumor that iRobot was discussing selling of the information to another party alarmed customer privacy advocates. "The company will never violate customer trust by selling or misusing customer-related data, including data collected by our connected products," Angle emphasized.