Smarthome 2015 – 80’s Computing Throwback?
Image C/O Gigaom
With so many competing IOT hubs and ecosystems – how can the dream of the connected home, digital butler experience be realized?
Can you remember personal computing in the 80’s? I was a Commodore 64 kid, I thought it was the best computer ever – why would anyone use anything else?
My classmates generally disagreed though – there was the ZX Spectrum, Tandy, Acorn, Atari, Amiga, BBC Micro (A and B), Amstrad, Apple, and the one kid who’s father had a CPM 80286.
The challenge was, even though we all had much the same goal – play the best games, learn how computers work, maybe write a game of our own – everything was completely different and incompatible – even storage with tape, microdrive, 3″, 3.5″ 5″, 8″ disks – each manufacturer, assured in their own superiority forged ahead creating their own proprietary isolated world. Read more…
Adventures in VBScript – Including code from other files
If you’re a VBScript hack like me, you’re probably frustrated by the inability of VBScript to include code from other files natively. Yes, you can use funky Job files etc, but nothing beats the simplicity of an all-in-one .VBS.
I’ve created innumerable “helper” scripts and classes over the years, and even wrote a tool I call “region” which selectively merges different files together to make one big (unreadable) script.
My utopia of having simple, small scripts which leveraged my 20 year programming library has not been achieved, until now.
Here you’ll find my “Include for VBS” function – surprisingly simple, but it took 20 years of thinking about it before I got around to writing it. There were two problems to solve: Read more…
Microsoft vs NY State, Still going on..
A quick followup to my blogs of September 2014 here and July 2014 here, where the NY State court is trying to compel Microsoft to hand over emails from one of their servers in Ireland.
Surprisingly this is still not decided according to The Irish Times – with the two opposing arguments “You can access the data remotely so we want it” and “NY State can’t compel us to give up data stored in another country without following due international process” still going on.
You can appreciate that if Microsoft loses this one, it spells the end of international business for US cloud storage providers – it’s bad enough that domestically the US Government can demand access to our in-country data, let alone demand access to data stored out of country, or even stored by people in other countries, in other countries.
Speaking at INTX 2015, Chicago May 5-7
This week I’ll be at INTX Chicago talking to ISPs and cable providers about our secure gateway technology – if you’re attending please drop into the Intel booth and say hello!
Understanding Internet Of Things for the Home
Last week Rory Cellan-Jones, a reporter for the BBC, tried to explain in his CES2015 news article why we, all of us, should be interested in the progress of “Internet of Things” for the home. Even our Intel President admitted it’s a hard topic to generally appreciate
I asked Intel’s President Renee James whether she thought anyone outside the show got this idea – and she admitted that they probably didn’t. “It means a lot to us,” she said “but this show is largely about the industry talking to itself.”
In my opinion Rory also misses some of the real value that’s being created in this space, so let me relate some thoughts on the good, and bad of “Home IOT” Read more…
CES2015 – A festival of insecure, unmanaged IOT devices..
The Internet of Things (IOT) and “smart devices” were THE big thing at CES this year – the show was flooded with novel gadgets from every manufacturer – from smart connected coffee makers, health tracking devices, fire alarms, home security systems, and even vehicles which some are considering the next “wearable”.
CES behemoth Samsung’s CEO Boo-Keun Yoon spent a significant portion of their keynote reminding us that IOT “is not science fiction anymore. It’s science fact” – something I can attest to with a significant number of their devices in my own home.
Everywhere you looked, there was either an IOT device, something that “IOT’s” your devices, or something that manages them – and of course in the Intel booth, we also devoted a significant portion of our time talking about how to manage and secure them. Read more…
Speaking at CES 6-9 Jan Las Vegas
This week I’ll be working the Intel booth at CES 2015 talking about how we secure smart homes – if you’re attending please drop by and say hello.
My group is not in the main hall – we’re reserving the main Intel booth for the latest generation of tablets and laptops. I’ll be in our dedicated Service Providers Division booth in the Raddison hotel just across the street.
CIO Review article on the Internet Of Things
Last month, CIO Review kindly asked for my opinion on the security challenges of IoT devices, and published it along with many other learned articles in the December IoT special.
You can find my contribution on pages 108-109 but I urge you to browse the entire publication.
“There has to be a back door…” – seriously?
Shocking revelations in a BBC news story today on the number of active cybercriminals – No, not the story itself, that was old news to industry veterans, but the closing quote from Troels Oerting, head of Europol’s Cybercrime center.
“Imagine in the physical world if you were not able to open the trunk of a car if you had a suspicion that there were weapons or drugs inside… we would never accept this.
“I think that should also count for the digital world. I hate to talk about backdoors but there has to be a possibility for law enforcement, if they are authorised, to look inside at what you are hiding in your online world.”
Really? There has to be a possibility for law enforcement to decrypt data? Read more…
IOS8 Security – Apple take the high road?
Jonathan Zdziarski posted an interesting blog last week detailing some of the changes in IOS designed to improve security, and reign in accessibility of data in the new IOS 8 release.
Historically, it’s been possible for legitimate law enforcement groups to pressure Apple into unlocking devices – Much like data requests sent to ISP’s about your browsing and network habits, Apple (and Google et all) were able to unlock “confiscated” devices so detectives could search them for incriminating evidence.
IOS8 makes that somewhat harder and puts Apple (and Google) squarely against what Law Enforcement and Governments want. Read more…
Who?
 | EVP Cyber Product Innovation for Mastercard. Formally the Chief Technology Officer for Intel Secure Home Gateways, CTO for McAfee Enterprise Endpoint, CTO McAfee Innovation team, and Founder/CTO SafeBoot Corp. |
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