M2M : Machine 2 Machine

M2M systems provide excellent tools for companies to manage their assets. At the same time these first generation M2M systems are vulnerable to attacks. Sufficient care must be taken to ensure that the systems are not compromised.

M2M as most of you know is not a new concept it has been around and quite a lot of our regular systems can be categorized as M2M. Your Car Navigation system is an example of a M2M system. The Navigation unit in your car uses data from a variety of locations to help you chart a course from point A to point B. In addition it can also monitor your average speed, places you have been, emergency assistance, directory services, Pay as you go insurance and many more applications.

Lock down external sources: You follow the directions that the machine gives to get to your destination. Researchers have discovered a way to hack into some of these systems and potentially “own” the messages your car gives you and where it tells you to go. The hack explores known external entry points into your navigation system – The Navigation module relies on GPS satellites to get their location and external data feeds for – Traffics information, Directory data and more. If these channels into your applications are compromised then your entire M2M deployment is compromised.

False Alarms:
A common M2M cost savings mentioned is – monitoring remote assets and allowing you to make a decision whether to roll a truck to get the problem fixed with the asset. Now if the data that is coming out of your monitoring ecosystem is erroneous or is hacked into – the false alarms that arise out of this situation may negate any benefit that the M2M system provides. You would end up responding to false alarms and once the filed personnel loose confidence in the M2M system – Any information that you get out of it is viewed with skepticism.

So should I even bother about M2M for now?

Yes – You need to. Your customers are going to ask for this, Your competition is going to have this – So in order to stay ahead of the game plan out your deployments. Ask the right security questions before rolling out a full fledged system

• How do I determine that my system is secure?
• How do I ensure that the data coming from the remote Asset is not compromised?
• How do I control the remote collection from the data asset?
• How do I deal with outages within the system?
• Perform a full security audit before taking your systems live with customers – you get one shot at getting this right – If customers do not have confidence in the data presented it is hard to win them over the second time.
• Follow the crawl, walk, run approach- Include incremental M2M features as you roll your system out to guarantee success

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Here is a true M2M Application that is being rolled out commercially that will impact you. The application allows users to pay for car insurance based on usage. You pay for as much as you consume – you drive 100 miles you pay insurance for 100 miles – you drive 100,000 miles you pay insurance for 100,000 miles. This is could change the face of the car insurance industry and if widely adopted / deployed on a standardized platform will allow other ancillary products and services to be offered to car drivers – Internet, Yellow Pages, Drive By/Localized Ad’s (won’t we love that), Streaming Music (everyone one wants a radio on the car) and more.

The application (PAYD) as you go is being used by insures in UK/Europe to offer drivers a means to pay for insurance based on actual miles driven. The cars have a built in GPS system that track the movement of the vehicle in real time – where you drive, when you drive and how often you drive (AKA Big Brother). Cool technology concept – but to make it a commercial success it needs to assuage consumer fears about Big Brother is watching.

Quote from the insurance Company
“Pay As You Drive”â„¢ insurance couldn’t be simpler. You pay a fixed monthly fee, plus a variable charge that’s based on your personal driving habits such as when you drive and how far.

• An in-car device (that uses GPS technology) records and transmits your cars journey information to our central computer.
• You receive a monthly bill (itemised billing is an optional service).
• Your premium is based on where, when and how far you drive.

Autonet Mobile (www.autonetmobile.com), which bills itself as the first Internet service provider for cars, will debut its new service at ShowStoppers during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The company also promises to announce an agreement with a world leading car rental company to offer a portable, wireless Internet service by the end of the first quarter of 2007.

It says the service will let passengers check email, surf the web, game or communicate via any WiFi-enabled device. According to Autonet Mobile “The service is optimised for the in-car experience, and is specifically designed to work on 95 percent of US roads, regardless of driving conditions or location.”

Installation is claimed to be plug and play by plugging the WiFi access point and router into the car’ cigarette lighter.

Autonet has given no details as to how the unit connects to the Internet except to say that its patent pending ‘TRU Technology’ (of which it gives no information) “enables seamless Internet connectivity so that passengers stay connected while driving…providing intelligent, dynamic automatic session management between high/low speed networks, producing a reliable user experience.”

The unit retails for $US399 with a monthly service charge of $US49.

According to Autonet Mobile CEO, Sterling Pratz, 40 percent of all SUVs and station wagons shipped in the US come equipped with media centres, supporting music and DVDs “yet, do not support today’s connected lifestyle of the Internet, e-mail and social media.”

M2M, Automation, Telemetry, Remote Monitoring, LBS

Remote activation of specific in-vehicle functions, such as turning on interior temperature-control and defrosting systems, shows a high likelihood of dramatically raising consumer interest in telematics services in future vehicles, according to a recent study conducted for ATX Group. ATX is the world’s second largest telematics provider to the automotive industry, serving both the North American and European markets.
Remote diagnostics of vehicle performance and automatic owner (parent) notification anytime the vehicle exceeded the owner’s pre-determined speed limit emerged as additional applications consumers preferred in a telematics service package.
Among the five telematics service package offerings included in the analysis (automatic crash notification, the remote access services, GPS location-based services, vehicle information, and satellite radio)*, vehicle owners in the U.S. were more likely to purchase a bundle of telematics services if it included the remote access capability.

M2M, Automation, Telemetry, Remote Monitoring, LBS

AN interesting article on efficiently processing large volumes of data. In a M2M scenarios the central systems get bombarded with gigabytes of raw data. Having a way to efficiently analyze this data – brings out teh true potential of a M2M system. More on the data processing article here >>>

Swarm Intelligence– Nature’s way . . .

By borrowing from nature, Xiaohui Cui of Oak Ridge National Laboratory is devising more efficient ways to analyze large amounts of publicly available data and perform other tasks to make information more accessible and useful.

While ants and birds don’t know anything about mathematical models, they represent the ideal when it comes to teamwork, colony organization and devising the best way to accomplish a task.

Using the same concepts that allow ants and birds to keep themselves in a colony and perform duties that are essential to their survival, Cui uses a technique called multiple species flock clustering, which sorts through news items on the Internet to extract useful information.

Cui also is developing a disposable sensor network based on the ant colony mathematical model, which enables large numbers of sensors to self-organize and collect and exchange information. This can be used, for example, by 1,000 or more battery-powered sensors deployed in strategic locations to monitor environmental activity or gather other information over a long period of time.

M2M, Automation, Telemetry, Remote Monitoring, LBS