In Screen We Trust: Turning Performance

IMTS 2016 featured more tools and systems for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) than ever.

The interconnected production environment can significantly improve manufacturing processes and reduce costs by structuring vast amounts of data into actionable information and controlling and monitoring machining performance, via sensors, in real time on a macro or micro level.

Wow! That sounds great. And with firewalls, password protection, encryption and other security measures, what could possibly go wrong? Sure, high-profile hacking occurs, but those are isolated incidents—the result of negligent or disgruntled workers, right?

That’s pretty much the perception I had until I read Marc Goodman’s “Future Crimes: Inside the Digital Underground and the Battle for Our Connected World” from Anchor Books. Goodman, who has a background in law enforcement and technology, emphasized the tremendous amount of wealth and control hackers, terrorists and state-sponsored agents can hijack from the “old” internet that allows desktops, laptops and servers to share information, as well as the current generation of smart phones, meters and watches. But in the rapidly approaching future, all objects may become “smart” and able to communicate an array of information.

“While its multifold benefits seem manifest, an Internet of everything also poses tremendous risk,” Goodman wrote. “For just as electricity can shock and kill, so too can billions of connected things networked online.”