Bhawan Kumari Nov 19, 2020, 04.37 PM IST
As we uncover how the connected IoT device ecosystem are bundling software, hardware, and other sensor technologies together to maximize vital support for various industry verticals.

Behold!! An immersive greatest revolution in the IoT ecosystem is unfolding in front of our eyes.

As we uncover how the connected IoT device ecosystem are bundling software, hardware, and other sensor technologies together to maximize vital support for various industry verticals. It is astonishing to see the computing powers of these tiny devices exploiting their physical limits. The monitoring and control benefits of these sensor network architecture is mind blowing and it is giving rise to disruptive innovations. These low-cost, scalable connected IoT devices rely on low bit rate often times through low power transreceivers, with short data packet.

It is very astonishing to see a starving appetite from various verticals, consumers, healthcare, automotive, education, aviation, manufacturing, power grids, recreation, entertainment, transportation, energy to name a few.

In our current times of Bharat, millions of varied IoT solutions are already deployed in these varied verticals using bandwidth spectrum of Telecom and Internet Service Providers. Millions more are being routed to the mainstream market which is booming with various IoT form factors (nano, mini, macro) to suit every possible requirement.

Majority of these IoT modules which are built to form the connected devices are often designed, developed and manufactured at various overseas OEMs or factories. A fraction of the total consumption of these IoT modules are designed in-house while some of them are assembled or manufactured at make in India units. While these are produced at mass scale overseas to keep the cost low, they are distributed to various verticals who then integrate them to form the connected IoT devices.

The manufacturers and the integrators have a loose hand as to how to design and build the IoT devices which can be easily market to our masses without any testing, certifications or even in-country regulations. While all this is happening overseas, the need for testing or certifications is passed onto the onus of the respective country regulator or is at the mercy of the IoT system solutions provider who often have litter to none motivation on their own. It is when the connected devices reaches the masses and often a security vulnerabilities are found then it’s already too late.

The data captured by these technological IoT marvels units deployed in masses can easily be put to ransom creating another set to nightmares for our digitally connected Bharat. The data can be quickly correlated, evaluated and manipulated giving an edge to the bad actors which can be a rogue nation or simple extortionists.

If on one hand, we are giving shape to the Atmanirbhar Bharat, we should also put our laser sharp focus on the wholesome security of these connected devices which are rising and multiplying at a phenomenal rate given the hunger of the innovative use cases. The challenges to rein in the data which these IoT devices are collecting and monitoring in raw form and sometimes encrypted form is often buried too far from the regulator or the law enforcement / security agencies. It becomes impossible to get their local hands on should a need arise to solve a criminal matter or simply to perform operational work.

Some of the real-life vulnerabilities cases in these IoT connected devices are already highlighted in the news. They clearly show the plight towards security adherence by these IoT manufacturers and integrators leading to a very novel way to exploit them.

The leaked data gathered is hijacked with ransom ware or often leads to silent intelligence, surveillance or data manipulation or even at times allowing full control of the IoT devices, often as a result of faulty chipset, its firmware or the software which is used to integrate it.

Majority of the manufacturers are slow to recall or patch the vulnerabilities leaving the loopholes open to exploit. The chipset which is the brain of the IoT devices are frequently used in the variety of the IoT connected devices with different use cases by multiple industries. Once the chipsets are vulnerable then all the industries using the IoT solution with the vulnerable chipset family is vulnerable. In one example a French manufacturer sold more than a billion IoT Modules which allowed the attackers to take total control over industrial, commercial and medical devices connected to the internet. The objective of these devices was to create secure communication channels over 3G and 4G networks. The hackers can easily exploit remotely to gain total control over the IoT connected devices hosting the vulnerable chipsets. They have yet to successfully patch all the billion plus IoT Modules connected to these devices.

No doubt these cutting-edge Marvel IoT solutions offer next generation performance for the masses with integrated support and real-time computing. But it is equally important to ensure by a central body to certify that they also offer adherence to security standards and protocols. The body must ensure that these IoT devices can be trusted and are safe to connect to our precious networks, keeping the spirit of Atmanirbhar Bharat alive.

While the central body should put a security ring around these vulnerable connected IoT end points, they should also spend some time to ensure that the vulnerabilities in the edge computing IoT Platforms are also under their scanner, making a wholesome 360-degree fence. If ignored this can lead us to billion plus and counting security can of worms which would jeopardize the national security.

Another potential challenge is that these IoT platforms which hosts these connected devices often are on the cloud servers in another country far from the jurisdictional reach. To make matters worse the software which is powering up these devices are often written loosely or sometimes in the native language code of the manufacturer country without any oversight on the code review.

The Thales fiasco is a grim and live example of today’s vulnerable times. The hacker can quickly gain access to the old fashioned Hayes modem used in the IoT module by dodging the Java application controls. Once this is accomplished then from there executing basic modem commands to make the modem to give up the readonly access to read, write and delete access. This means that the modem then become susceptible to revel embedded secrets such as passwords, end to end encryption keys and even reverse engineer the entire Java application exposing the source code.

Now multiply this total control on Billion plus connected devices and it can create an unimaginable havoc with so many worse scenarios for the digitally connected Bharat. All the connected industries compromised using this IoT solutions based upon the Thales chipset and this is just a one off case.

Bhawan Kumari Oct 13, 2020, 12.20 PM IST
We have to examine that the data security which is paramount in today’s connected world starts from the very crucial smart device, the end point and travels all the way to the connected server farms which are hosting them.

In our billion plus Bharat, consumers have started acquiring the smart mobile devices at a rapid pace even in rural villages. When choosing devices, their motivation gets swayed at the new and improved functions, features, disruptive innovative designs, memory, multiple high resolution cameras, better touch screen, 5G readiness, streaming capabilities, contact less experience, etc. They often are heavily influenced by the marketing glitzes of celebrities and athletes pushing one device over the other. Sometimes just the fierce comparison of a device packing more features than its competitors at a marginal price is a game changer.

The most vital and important aspect of the smartphone is often ignored or overlooked; handling of data. Yes, the golden data which is an integral part of the smart device.

It is estimated that an average smartphone in Bharat generates data consisting of social interaction, posting, email, streaming, photos, home movies, messages, voice over IP, all personal and customized to that smartphone owner. This multitudes more than any part of the world in twenty-six regional languages, data all stacked behind in bits and bytes.

The most important vulnerable facts of handling customized data in today’s devices remain hidden and difficult to access. One must be a super geek working in a manufacturer’s forensic lab to get to it, using hard core proprietary third party tools to sniff out, that too very rarely with some luck. A layman citizen is far-far away from this geeky exercise and has no clue about it.

This brings few very critical and important questions to ponder below as it has vast national security implications:

• Where is the personal data generated for Bharat citizens being distributed to? How is it distributed?
• Which transporting channels are being used?
• Are they secure and encrypted?
• If encrypted how many third-parties hold the encrypted keys?
• Are these third-parties’ authorized to use them?
• Are the citizens explicitly aware of the third-party access to their personal data being generated in Bharat?
• Is the data locally warehoused in Bharat or are they being transported away briskly at the remote locations in far off remote country’s cloud server farms?
• Are these server farms ruthlessly analyzing, studying, profiling, exploiting, manipulating and ingesting the collective Bharat’s citizen’s data?
• Why are the use of modern AI algorithms used to give shape for future coursing transformation while keeping it live in-sync with the host device thousands of miles away without the citizen’s explicit knowledge?
• Why is the re-location or syncing of data pulled from the device’s storage or built in-device cloud and its open integrated distribution to various third party apps is often deliberately done or overlooked to satisfy the hunger for data dominance and commercial exploitation?

These open practices of today’s ruthless digital world result in compromised personal safety and security of an individual or a department even at times an organization, making it prone to oozing data which often ends up in dark webstore open for large scale exploits by bad actors.

At times it is meant for an even bigger part of the jigsaw puzzle of creating detailed profiling values of every citizen of Bharat, dividing, them in various categories of race, colour, creed, origin, gender, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, marital and family status, political beliefs, biometric, income, active servicemen or veteran etc. the attribute list goes on and on these are just to name a few which is crafted meticulously by AI algorithms using big data platforms which are readily available today to process various data points to support complex navigation and modeling.

This deep data mining and its analysis does not stop here, it goes even farther to kick-start gene-mapping with more disease prone activities starting from our new born, loved ones, grown up children, parents, grandparents, the cluster of entire families. They are mapped to come up with predictable societal behaviors and controls for its manipulation.

Another practiced malicious intent behind segregation of data is to create classic propaganda, influence, fake news, hostile social manipulation using multiple social media channels where these kinds of news are open game without having any control or regulator control to censor while scrutinizing through millions of postings a day.

Todays modern AI driven tools have self-learned to create unique voices and videos and have even have created realistic voice and video profiles of prominent individual which then are used to create highly plausible audio and video feeds to reduce confidence in the reality or the absolute truth by mixing it with fake message to create and spread confusion at mass levels.

The role of creating zero trust is a highly prized sought after attack towards a government body or an eminent person, or institution, spreading of rumors backed by manipulated audio & video and being tweeted and retweeted , or shared across multiple platforms make it consistent with the primary objective of the bad actors who are highbred to create coups or to topple the government by interfering in the elections or simply creating border tensions by showing false footage to incite rebellion or create communal hate crimes against one another.

The customized buffet of data with news and current affairs are all surgically delivered based upon the input of the data preferences which has been secretly transported away at far labs to create customized vulnerable audience profiles.

In order to organize and control the ever-growing digital data chaos and mismanagement, we have to examine that the data security which is paramount in today’s connected world starts from the very crucial smart device, the end point and travels all the way to the connected server farms which are hosting them. Atmanirbhar Bharat’s network of wisdom server farms if all interconnected can significantly play an important role to the core principles of safe and approved transportation channels , approved data warehousing standards, re-location standards without the data ever leaving the country yet provide an aggressive network CDN grade versatility, empowering citizens to be in total control on the ownership of the data with very crisp and simple rules which distinguish marketing vis a vie exploiting.

The voices, images, favorite locations, home address, health, sleep time are being monitored, listened, analyzed, profiled to support the adoption of the next generation of analytics, even remotely listening in to the conversation to pick up key words and create customized flags to augment the enhancement of the profile in the database. This small yet powerful data collection activity gets bigger day by day minute by minute using the data snooping persistent algorithms built into our connected mobile devices which we have come to rely upon minute by minute for the ease of our day to day activities thanks by far to the abundant readily and cheaply available bandwidth which keeps us connected which in turn is exploited by the 24x7 customized integrated intelligence analytics.

Unless the ambitious new experience of Atmanirbhar Bharat’s network of wisdom server farms is rolled into play, and the warehousing, distribution, re-location, and importantly transportation is aligned as the standard constellation stars of Bharat’s new data age innovation zones, it will not be a game changer and we will be chasing the foreign established actors for the data created by the Bharat of the Bharat and for the Bharat and it shall perish away from Bharat.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETTelecom.com does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETTelecom.com shall not be responsible for any damage caused to any person/organisation directly or indirectly.

The Mobile Association has signed an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with Indo Sino Business Bridge China for bringing Indian and Chinese Mobile handset industry closer to each other.

The Mobile Association and Indo Sino Business Bridge China will work together to develop and promote India’s mobile manufacturing ecosystem and open up new opportunities for startups and entrepreneurs.

It was indeed an honor and privilege to meet up with the Honorable Prime Minister of Gabon Mr. Emmaneul Issoze – Ngondet at New Delhi. This golden opportunity arose when the Prime Minister was in the capital to discuss the “Actionable Business Intelligence” as the India of today is a galloping economy and a land of immense business opportunities.

Mr. Bhupesh Raseen Chairman Mobile Advisory Committee discussed the possibilities of Indian Mobile brands and OEM manufacturing and exporting the Make in India mobile devices.

The meeting was very fruitful with both sides expressing desire of mutual cooperation and participation from the Mobile Industry.

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Mr. Mark Linscott was very thrilled to hear about India’s progress in mobility space especially about the Mobile Industry initiatives of Make in India. He was very pleased to hear about TMA’s key Initiatives connecting the Mobile ecosystem stakeholders.