IoT Innovation Depends on Cyber Resilience, House Subcommittee Told

The subcommittee is closely monitoring the Spectre/Meltdown cyber vulnerabilities (see 1801050050), Latta said, and continues to track fallout from the Equifax breach (see 1711170049). “You have to have cybersecurity with backups and redundancies,” Latta said, saying “it’s very important for businesses to understand how serious the problem is.” IoT also has significant potential for improving real-time communication in the public and private sector, with changes evident already in operations of municipal water systems and electric grids, he said.

Experts find U.S. companies “are not doing enough to address” cybersecurity risks, said House Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J. He also raised concerns about IoT's impact on the manufacturing workforce. “We should not be scared of these new technologies, but we must realize their potential effects on jobs,” said Pallone, one of several members asking industry witnesses whether IoT innovations and robots will displace U.S. workers. “We need to be responsive to what the changes mean to the workforce,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.

“Robots are great, but they’re never going to replace people,” said Thomas Kurfess, Georgia Institute of Technology mechanical engineering professor: Robotics “allows us to get rid of some really nasty jobs,” but there has to be a balance where humans remain in charge. IoT device assimilation in the manufacturing space requires a trained workforce, but the general population mostly has accepted IoT in daily life, so transitioning IoT to work “is a path that is easily pursued,” Kurfess said. “We have FitBits for humans. We can also have FitBits for robots and machines.”

“We’ll still need people to monitor and run things,” said Rodney Masney, Owens-Illinois vice president-technology service delivery. The glass manufacturer's factories are moving toward more IoT implementation as it transforms "the ‘craft’ of glass making to that of a data driven science,” Masney said. The company is studying how to use sensor technology to reduce the energy needed to operate glass-making furnaces and properly maintain equipment. “Costs to achieve full deployment … can be daunting,” Masney said, as is ensuring the highly trained workers needed to run connected factories.

Congress can play an important role in ensuring IoT gets deployed across the industry, and to be successful, companies need access to quality broadband, wireline and wireless, said Thomas Bianculli, Zebra Technologies chief technology officer. Manufacturers are realizing benefits of data connectivity, especially in areas including shipping, inventory and diagnosing points of failure, Bianculli said. A 2017 Zebra manufacturing study found 27 percent of companies are collecting data from production, supply chain and workers, with 34 percent predicting they will have a connected factory by 2022, Bianculli said.

“Who owns data that is ubiquitously collected?” asked Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., saying he’s concerned Chinese companies will steal U.S. proprietary information to produce lower-cost knock-off products. No witness could answer. VMware Chief Operating Officer Sanjay Poonen said a “combination of protective measures” must be employed at enterprise level to guard against intellectual property theft and cyberattacks.

It can be a challenge to safeguard cybersecurity when IoT devices and other digitized equipment “originating from different manufacturers” are being deployed, Poonen said. “We will see a significant increase in IoT gateway devices that aggregate and manage large collections” of devices, deployed outside the “safety of traditional physical datacenter boundaries” in cars, oil rigs, as part of the power grid and on cell towers, he said. From a security standpoint, IoT gateways should be able to isolate individual devices and “ensure adequate cyber hygiene,” Poonen said.