IoT devices need not be dumb

Aruba’s Justin Chiah sees marriage of seamless and secure connectivity.

JUSTIN Chiah sees IoT devices maturing fast technology-wise. JOHN HENRY DODSON

Justin Chiah, who oversees the business side in 19 countries of Hewlett Packard enterprise company Aruba, was practically gushing at the poolside of Shangri-la Boracay when interviewed by Daily Tribune at the sideline of the CXO Innovation Summit 2019 organized by VST ECS Phils., Inc. last 17 and 18 of October.

And Chiah has ample reasons to be happy over what Aruba sees to be the widespread adoption of IoT or the Internet of Things as seen from an international research undertaken and study published by the company this year.

The survey revealed that IoT adopters have seen what technology can do towards harnessing the power of data to help businesses grow — the theme of the CXO conference

— notwithstanding that 84 percent of participants noted IoT-related security breaches.

Tech visionary Kevin Ashton coined the term Internet of Things, referring to “sensors connected to the Internet and behaving in an Internet-like way by making open, ad hoc connections, sharing data freely and allowing unexpected applications, so computers can understand the world around them and become humanity’s nervous system.”

During a talk in the breakout sessions at CXO, Aruba engineer Gordon Tan said that IoT devices, by their very nature and going by Ashton’s concept of IoT, “are business criticial, but are fundamentally untrustworthy” since they lack firewalls, anti-malware and have “zero-attack protections.”

An example of a “dumb” IoT device would be closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras, which as seen in movies like the Mission Impossible series, can easily be hacked into.

Therein lies the difference between the IoT products and services provided by Aruba, Chiah told this writer, saying they do not just provide seamless but also very secure connectivity to so-called endpoints or, in

geek-speak the “edges” of service such as hospitals, stadiums, schools and hotels.

Chiah agreed with this writer’s observation that the speed and power of 5G Internet connectivity may not be the “holy grail” of providing end-to-end connectivity — from the clouds to the “edges” — because of inherent limitations on technology used by telecom companies.

“Fact is passage of cellular signals, even if 5G, is hampered by a lot of things like thick concrete walls. This is where the IoT players come in to provide state of the art WiFi services,” Chiah said, referring to their ClearPass system and the Aruba Secure Fabric 360.

He said their IoT connections are secure from hacking and outside intrusion through their use of artificial intelligence in their products and applications to identify possible attacks and act on them.

The company’s study revealed that seven in 10 enterprises have introduced IoT devices into the workplace, with indoor location-based services ranking as the “second most promising use to improve productivity.”

Chiah was specifically proud of leading a team which managed data center, branch routing and network management solutions for their clients.