An unprecedented boom in wearable technology and smart homes will make 2015 a year of huge rewards for American consumers — and terrifying opportunities for hackers.
Did you think North Korea's hack into Sony Pictures was bad? Try a hack of your insulin pump, your heart monitor, your light bulbs or your door locks.
Data thefts are about to hit us where we live. As sensors on your wrists and your walls become ubiquitous, the data derived from them is being collected and stored — and its security is about to be tested in a major way in 2015.
Central to the year's digital plot line is what is known as the Internet of Things — think of it as a revolution akin to the World Wide Web in the 1990s.
Instead of wiring computers together, we're wiring devices together, bringing online nearly everything that was previously inert.
Exhibit A: Google has acquired digital thermostat-maker Nest. Exhibit B: Apple's upcoming release of the iWatch.
From your thermostat to your health tracker, everything will start to have its own Internet protocol, or IP Address, starting this year.
The opportunities for the tech industry are huge.
Cable companies and wireless providers alike are trying to dominate in this space, offering monthly smart-home packages with huge install costs and monthly fees. But they'll fail.
What's likely to win out are the easy-setup piecemeal options that communicate well together. Those include the Philips Hue connected light bulbs, Microsoft's Kinect sensor, which straddles the line of smart home and fitness devices, the Apple HealthKit platform and, of course, Nest.
Eventually, smart home technology and wearables will work seamlessly together and you'll think of both as part of one big category, the Internet of Things.
But here's the spark that will ignite a revolution: The biggest providers of cloud computing, Amazon and Microsoft, have made it easier than ever for smaller startups to have the capability to analyze the reams of data coming from all those sensors.
Within the past several months, smaller companies have been able to take these massive quantities of intel — streams of data so big and so smart they're more like neural networks — and apply a type of artificial intelligence known as "machine learning" to them. That's when computers become so smart they program themselves.
That would usually take millions of dollars in capital investments. But advances in cloud computing mean the cost is close to zero.
In 2015, companies will start to be able to provide amazing services we can't even anticipate today, driving the entire smart home and health revolution forward and solidifying it as a central part of our consumer culture.
But as all this data is pulled and stored, access points for cyberattackers increase. And no matter what these companies tell you, our security capabilities have not caught up — and won't in 2015.
Devices that digitally secure your home may seem smart now, but what if a state-sponsored group implanted them with a virus programmed to lay dormant until one day it unlocks all the homes in a particular city? Or those smart thermostats that provide great intel on when people are home and even in a particular room? They might give rise to smart burglars.
So while corporations are worried about being the next Sony Pictures, my concern for 2015 is an attack on the Internet of Things — the digital epitome of a double-edged sword.
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