Reading through the news today, I stumbled across the phrase “Internet of Broken Things.” Upon researching, it’s been around as a term for a long time but somehow never came to my attention. It’s a great phrase because it both skewers a giant buzzword and accurately describes most IoT projects.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, technology is hard. Real technology requires understanding hardware, software, people, processes and finance. Our world has made it very easy to build and distribute bad technology. It’s also really easy for those companies to pretend their bad technology is good. This is made easier because so few people understand the risks of technology.
Bad technology can be any of a number of things:
- Lack of basic security – it can be hacked easily leading to the tech being misused or the data being stolen
- Unnecessary functionality – many IoT devices have features that are completely unnecessary that lead to future risks simply because they can: WiFi, 4G, GPS, accelerometers
- Unable to be updated – if you run software on the internet and it cannot be updated, you will eventually be vulnerable
- Connecting unsecure tech to a secure network – even if the IoT works to spec and the risks are known, if you put something unsecure on your secure network, you are creating a hole
- Data retained forever – you may forget about that IoT device but your data associated with it may exist forever and suddenly become free in the future
Picking a solution that solves some problem today seems like a good thing to do on the surface. The problem is, too often, today’s solution creates four problems downstream in the future. The law of unintended consequences is powerful and should never be ignored.