The Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming the way companies do business by making it easier to connect objects in the physical world to monitoring, control, and analysis systems via the web. Michael Sentonas, chief technology and strategy officer for Intel Security Asia Pacific, tells Viet Nam News reporter Vu Hoa about IoT development's potential in Viet Nam.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has positively impacted daily life. It offers advantages to both consumers and businesses across areas such as healthcare, education, home automation and safety, besides public infrastructure. In the Vietnamese context, IoT can be used in sectors such as transportation, healthcare and agriculture to improve efficiency, cut costs and upgrade service quality.

Imagine living and working in a world where objects as diverse as smartphones, cars and household appliances are linked to industrial sensors. In this world, your ageing parents can wear a wristband that will send a signal to the home nursing foundation if their blood pressure or heart rate increases too rapidly. You can change the settings of your refrigerator using your mobile phone as you drive home from work, so your lamb chops will be defrosted and ready to cook.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. The installed base of the Internet of Things is estimated to be 212 billion "things" globally by the end of 2020. This equates to approximately 27 things for every person on earth that will need to be secured and managed.

What is your evaluation of IoT's development potential?

According to Gartner Research, IoT products and services will generate incremental revenue exceeding US$300 billion, mostly in services, in 2020. The result will be $1.9 trillion in global economic value addition through sales into diverse end markets. The McKinsey Global Institute concurs, predicting IoT will have the broadest economic impact of all disruptive technologies, potentially in the area of $36 trillion in operating costs.

 What is the role of IoT in building a smart nation?

IoT is essential to making Smart Nation a reality. For example, sensing capabilities are needed to build context and intelligence, while smart applications enable the implementation of smart services. With IoT, the environment will become more intelligent and interactive. Governments will be able to generate useful data, drive analytics and develop applications to improve healthcare, transportation and more.

What challenges has Intel Security faced while implementing IoT solutions in Viet Nam, and how were these challenges overcome?

Security is an important aspect of IoT that needs to be addressed. While there are significant economic benefits to collecting and opening up data for sharing, there is also the danger of data being misused. Security needs to cut across the entire IoT spectrum, whether it is protecting devices, putting in access control measures, writing security codes, or looking at security from the policy perspective. Security must be put in place before smart applications are introduced to the nation.

Intel Security is addressing security by providing long-term assured functionality and other core security capabilities for a vast array of current and future IoT use cases. To effectively secure these IP connected devices, security needs be part of the design and not an afterthought.

A comprehensive IoT strategy includes a secure and holistic solution for information-rich environments across multiple environments and devices; assurance that devices are operating as intended by the manufacturer and have not been corrupted; life cycle security across the device, network and data centre. It also comprises support for industry standards and device interpretability; ability to solve information technology/cloud service challenges in connecting legacy and new systems to new and future services and provide technology to assure individual privacy.

 Intel IoT Solution Alliance is expected to help Vietnamese enterprises, especially the start-up community, to launch IoT. How will Vietnamese firms benefit from the alliance and how can they join the ISA?

To create a development environment for the IoT ecosystem worldwide, Intel founded the Intel IoT Solutions Alliance (ISA). The alliance has more than 400 members and more than 5,000 IoTs were introduced for customers and the IoT partners to build and complete its solutions with cost optimisation and low risk. Close collaboration with Intel and each other enables alliance members to innovate with the latest IoT technologies, helping developers deliver first-in-market solutions. — VNS