How 'Internet of Things' can boost India's smart city mission

It is imperative to create safe networks for digitally connected environments

The Internet of Things (IoT) has created a worldwide network of smart, connected devices that enhance our lives, economies, and businesses. And this network is rapidly growing. According to a recent Gartner report, the number of connected devices used globally is expected to increase from 8.4 billion — which is more than the world population — in2017 to a staggering 20.4 billion by 2020. Clearly, IoT is here to stay. The question is, how do we channelise its potential to maximise the desired impact and mitigate the risks that it must inevitably entail?
 

Digital technology will play an important role in all of India’s current and future development programmes, and a large part of it will be fulfilled by IoT. As India changes gear and accelerates her journey into being a truly digital economy, IoT will be the catalyst that drives socioeconomic progress by providing citizens with improved access to and quality of education, health, finance, safety, and essential public services.
 

Today, there are over a hundred initiatives planned for India under the Smart City Mission — cities that will be equipped with high-end technologies for powering and sustaining machine-to-machine (M2M) communication, which will not only help us create a better quality of life but also analyse how we can continuously improve that quality by monitoring resource consumption patterns and usage statistics.
 

Even the most basic financial transactions today have a digital component. Our retail experiences are increasingly informed by big data. Access to government services are online. Whether at home or away, many of the tools and devices we use for travel, education, finance and entertainment have the capacity to connect to the internet and communicate with each other — right from smart mousetraps, smart cars and smart interior lights to intelligent banking systems. Dependence on connected devices is permeating our very societal fabric. Information technology has transformed the entire ecosystem of public services ever since the government launched the Digital India programme with the vision of transforming India into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge economy.
 

The Aadhaar identity platform is one of the key pillars of Digital India, wherein every resident of the country is provided with a unique identity or Aadhaar number. The largest biometrics-based identification system in the world, Aadhaar is unique and robust enough to eliminate duplicate or fake identities, and may be used for effective service delivery, thereby promoting transparency and good governance.
 

All these initiatives play the role of catalysts for IoT adoption across the country, with industries such as utilities, manufacturing, automotive, transportation and logistics leading the way, followed by health care, retail and agriculture.

From a business perspective, the interconnectivity of IoT enables digital transformation and catalyses the development of new business models and offerings. It helps the business to stay relevant to its customers, gain competitive advantage and grow new revenue streams. For this, connectivity must be flexible and agile, and capable of achieving the network performance required for a wide variety of evolving applications and devices.
 

It is imperative that we create safe and secure networks for all these digitally connected environments so our homes, our businesses and our country become safe, almost impregnable. And to do this, it is essential to partner with cyber security experts.
 

A security breach in the form of a cyber attack can cause serious and sometimes irreparable damage. IoT brings with it huge opportunities as well as vulnerabilities of epic proportions. As Vinton Cerf, one of the creators of internet protocols, put it: “We didn’t focus on how you could wreck this system intentionally.” Being connected today implies security vulnerabilities. As more devices increasingly get connected over the internet, and data moves online to support automation, governments and organisations will need to stay sharp and constantly re-evaluate and upgrade their security measures. Ensuring a stable and safe digital environment is essential in a world made simpler and smarter by IoT. Remember, security is not a perfect science, but identifying vulnerabilities and ensuring timely and adequate interventions can certainly go a long way in enabling a stable infrastructure that can thwart unforeseen predatory movements.