This week we had the opportunity to attend the Internet of Things Developers Conference, better known as IoT DevCon. The conference was held in Santa Clara, the heart of Silicon Valley. The conference was focused specifically to the IoT product developer, and was focused on in-depth technical analysis, tutorials, business strategies, and product updates.
One session which was particularly interesting was called No IoT Without SoT – the Security of Things. This was led by Maarten Bron, Director of Innovations at Underwriters Laboratories. He explained that in today’s world, there is no safety without security. As the connected society continues to expand, we are rapidly approaching the practical limits of classical IT security certification. His presentation gave an overview of IoT security today – as well as a glimpse of where crowd-sourced testing and public ledger technology could bring the SoT of tomorrow.
Another panel highlight was Scalable Secure Identity for IoT, presented by Rod Schultz, VP of Product at Rubicon Labs. One of the biggest challenges with IoT is the provisioning of identity to millions of devices that will soon enter the world. If done correctly, this requires secure digital uniqueness coupled with a system or service that validates that uniqueness. Unlike the biological world where uniqueness simply comes for ‘free’ (different DNA, different fingerprint), the digital world is very unusual and has unsolved challenges. Rod discussed the problem of creating, managing, and validating uniqueness at scale. IoT is not the first time identity at scale has been required.
Here are some additional highlights.
We enjoyed IoT DevCon and look forward to the next event!. If you’re attending DevOps Day next month, don’t miss the presentation of our COO and co-founder, Pete Sclafani.