Category: Internet of Things (IOT)

Azure Digital Twins: Features and Advantages

Azure Digital Twins: Features and Advantages

Overview

Azure Digital Twins is a platform that enables you to create digital representations of physical environments and assets. You can use it to model complex scenarios, monitor real-time data, and optimize performance and efficiency. In this blog post, we will explore some of the features and benefits of Azure Digital Twins, and how you can get started with it.

Features of Azure Digital Twins

  • Spatial Intelligence Graph: This is the core component of Azure Digital Twins. It allows you to define the relationships and interactions between people, places, and devices in your digital twin. You can use predefined models or create your own custom ones.
  • Live Execution Environment: This is where you can run your digital twin logic and queries. You can use Azure Functions, Logic Apps, or custom code to implement your business logic and workflows. You can also use Azure Stream Analytics, Azure Synapse Analytics, or Power BI to analyze and visualize your data.
  • Integration with Azure IoT Hub: You can connect your physical devices and sensors to Azure IoT Hub, and then map them to your digital twin entities. This way, you can stream real-time data from your devices to your digital twin, and vice versa.
  • Integration with other Azure services: You can leverage other Azure services to enhance your digital twin solutions. For example, you can use Azure Maps to add geospatial context, Azure Cognitive Services to add AI capabilities, or Azure Security Center to secure your digital twin.

Advantages of Azure Digital Twins

  • Scalability: Handle large-scale, complex scenarios with millions of entities and relationships. You can scale up or down as needed and pay only for what you use.
  • Flexibility: You can model any scenario and use any data source. You can use the built-in models or create your custom ones. You can also use any programming language and framework to develop your digital twin logic and queries.
  • Interoperability: Supports open standards and protocols, such as DTDL (Digital Twins Definition Language), OPC UA (Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture), and MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport). Easily integrate with other platforms and systems on-premises and in the cloud.
  • Innovation: Enables you to create new and innovative solutions for various domains and industries, such as smart buildings, smart cities, smart manufacturing, smart healthcare, and more. You can simulate scenarios, optimize outcomes, and generate insights that were not possible before.

Getting Started

To get started, you need to follow these steps:

  1. Create an Azure account and an Azure Digital Twins instance.
  2. Define your digital twin model using DTDL or the built-in models.
  3. Upload your model to your Azure Digital Twins instance using the Azure portal or the SDKs.
  4. Connect your devices and sensors to Azure IoT Hub and map them to your digital twin entities.
  5. Implement your digital twin logic and queries using Azure Functions, Logic Apps, or custom code.
  6. Analyze and visualize your data using Azure Stream Analytics, Azure Synapse Analytics, or Power BI.

Conclusion

Azure Digital Twins is a powerful platform that allows you to create digital representations of physical environments and assets. You can use it to model complex scenarios, monitor real-time data, and optimize performance and efficiency. You can also integrate with other Azure services to add more capabilities and value to your digital twin solutions. To learn more, visit the official documentation page here.

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Azure Sphere: IoT Protection Made Simple

Azure Sphere: IoT Protection Made Simple

Introduction

If you want to create, connect, and maintain secured intelligent IoT devices from the edge to the cloud, you might want to check out Azure Sphere. It is a secured, high-level application platform with built-in communication and security features for internet-connected devices. This blog post will explore what Azure Sphere offers, its advantages, and the steps to use it.

What is Azure Sphere?

Azure Sphere is a product of Microsoft that consists of three components:

  • Secured, connected, crossover microcontroller unit (MCU) that integrates real-time processing capabilities with the ability to run a high-level operating system.
  • Custom high-level Linux-based operating system (OS) that provides a secured application environment, authenticated connections, and over-the-air updates.
  • Cloud-based security service that provides continuous, renewable security for the device, data, and infrastructure. It also enables interoperation with IoT platform services like Azure IoT Hub and IoT Central.

The Sphere MCUs can be embedded into new devices or used as guardian modules to connect existing devices to the cloud. Sphere devices can be updated, controlled, monitored, and maintained remotely through the Azure Sphere Security Service.

What are the advantages?

The Sphere offers several benefits for IoT developers and users, such as:

  • Protects your device, data, and infrastructure on all fronts—hardware, software, and in the cloud. It implements the seven properties of highly secured devices identified by Microsoft research. They are the hardware-based root of trust, small trusted computing base, certificate-based authentication, renewable security, defense in depth, compartmentalization, and failure reporting.
  • Simplifies device management and maintenance by providing automatic software updates from the cloud to any connected device. You can deploy updates and improvements to your application alongside your OS directly to the IoT device over-the-air (OTA).
  • Helps you focus on your business strategy and innovation by reducing the complexity and cost of developing secured IoT solutions. You can leverage flexible implementation options and bring-your-own-cloud connectivity to deploy your solutions faster.
  • Enables you to collect product usage data and customer feedback over a secured connection. You can use this data to diagnose problems, provide new functionality, and design better products.

How to use Azure Sphere?

To get started, you need to follow these steps:

  1. Order an Azure Sphere development kit from one of the hardware partners. The development kit includes an Azure Sphere MCU board and a USB cable.
  2. Install the Azure Sphere SDK on your Windows or Linux machine. The SDK includes tools and libraries for developing and debugging applications for Azure Sphere devices.
  3. Register your device with the Azure Sphere Security Service using the Azure Sphere CLI or Visual Studio Code extension. This will assign a unique ID to your device and enable it to receive OS updates and application deployments from the cloud.
  4. Develop your application using Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code to create your application for Sphere devices. You can use C or C++ as the programming language and leverage the Sphere libraries and APIs for communication and security features.
  5. Deploy your application using Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code to build and deploy your application to your device via USB or OTA. You can also use the Sphere CLI or REST API to manage your deployments programmatically.

Conclusion

To learn more, visit the official website or check out the documentation.

We hope this blog post has given you an overview of Azure Sphere, its advantages, and how to use it. If you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment below.

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AWS IoT: New Features and Enhancements

AWS IoT: New Features and Enhancements

AWS IoT: What’s New in August 2023?

AWS IoT is a set of services that enable you to connect, manage, and secure your devices and applications on the cloud. This blog post will highlight some of the new features and enhancements AWS IoT introduced in August 2023.

AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN Now Supports Device Provisioning Through QR Codes

AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN is a fully managed service that allows you to connect and manage your LoRaWAN devices on AWS. Now, you can provision your devices using QR codes. This simplifies device registration and reduces the risk of human error. Scan the QR code on your device using the AWS IoT Core for the LoRaWAN console or the Device Management mobile app. The service will automatically create a device certificate and assign a thing name and a LoRaWAN profile to your device.

AWS IoT Greengrass Adds Support for Python 3.9 and Node.js 14

AWS IoT Greengrass extends AWS to the edge. It allows you to run local compute, messaging, data management, sync, and ML inference capabilities on your devices. You can use Python 3.9 and Node.js 14 as the runtime for your Greengrass components. This provides access to the latest language features and security updates. Also, use the Greengrass Core SDKs for Python and Node.js to interact with the Greengrass core device and other components.

AWS IoT SiteWise Launches Asset Dashboards and Widgets

SiteWise is a managed service for collecting, storing, organizing, and monitoring data from industrial equipment at scale. With IoT SiteWise, you can now create asset dashboards and widgets. These tools let you visualize and analyze your asset data in real-time. Additionally, you have the option to share your dashboards with others or embed them in your applications. You can also share your dashboards with other users or embed them in your own applications.

Analytics Adds Support for Apache Parquet Format

AWS IoT Analytics enables you to process, enrich, store, analyze, and visualize IoT data at scale. Your processed data can now be stored in Apache Parquet format. This format offers high compression and performance benefits. You can query your Parquet data using standard SQL with IoT Analytics or other AWS services like Amazon Athena, Amazon Redshift Spectrum, or Amazon EMR.

Device Defender Launches Audit Finding Suppressions

Device Defender continuously audits your IoT devices and policies for security best practices. It alerts you to any issues. Now, you can suppress audit findings that aren’t relevant or actionable for your use case. This reduces noise and lets you focus on critical issues. Additionally, you can specify the criteria for suppressing audit findings, such as the audit check name, the resource type, the resource identifier, or the finding severity. Also, view and manage your suppressed audit findings using the Device Defender console or API.

Conclusion

These are some of the new features and enhancements that AWS IoT introduced in August 2023. We hope you find them useful and we look forward to hearing your feedback. To learn more about IoT services and solutions, click here.

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Security in IoT - The flip side of the next big thing in technology

Security in IoT – The flip side of the next big thing in technology

Touted as the revolution that would change the world as we know it, the Internet of Things is a phenomenon that’s been gaining steady mileage over the years. In fact, GE predicts investment in Industrial Internet of Things to top $60 trillion during the next 15 years.

Every business wants to leverage IoT – from manufacturing to utilities, from healthcare to customer electronics. Think predictive maintenance of plant-floor machinery, automatic information transfer from electricity meters to service providers, auto-purchase of supplies such as shampoo by a carwash machine, and many such use cases that would enable businesses to improve user experience.

So much so, that even banks are exploiting IoT. Case in point is Capital One exploring Amazon Alexa, and adding another avenue in its omni-channel strategy. Capital One customers can now just talk to a device connected with Amazon Alexa, and easily learn their account and transaction status. Check out the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxLhhM8RU-o

Source: YouTube

It is easy to predict the question running in your minds now. “My bank account details are with a device, out in the open for hacking and misuse?” Well, sometimes convenience doesn’t come without risks. And while IoT makes our lives easier, it can easily turn them into nightmares.

Weaponization of IoT?

Security in IoT

How secure is the data that these ‘things’ or devices pass among each other?

The truth is, not so safe.

As per a 2014 report by HP, 7 out of 10 IoT devices have security flaws – with an average of 25 vulnerabilities per device.

Today, any attacker worth their salt can hack into an IoT device and manipulate it to act on their orders. Bank account numbers and credentials can be accessed and used to cause fund diversion. Smart electricity meters can be rigged to cause power outages.

And though it may seem far-fetched, pacemaker transmitters can be ‘doctored’ to deliver deadly shocks to patients connected with pacemakers.

While your device control may be taken over and data be stolen, you may also be subjected to denial of service attacks. On October 2016, widespread Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks were reported in the US, that affected 80 major websites like Amazon, BBC, Twitter, Slack, etc. Thought to be the largest-ever, the attack was caused by a botnet that had injected the Mirai malware, into a number of IoT devices such as printers, IP cameras and even baby monitors. Mirai scanned for IoT devices that had weak factory default setting (hard-coded usernames and passwords), converted them into bots, and then used them to launch DDoS attack.

In another DDoS attack, connected heating devices were hacked, leaving Finnish residents in hazardous sub-zero conditions.

Such events can cause widespread chaos and mayhem among the general public.

Making IoT more secure Security in IoT

Security in IoT  is a key concern that’s hounding the aficionados. The benefits are aplenty, and usher our world into a new era in technology, but at what cost? It is important for businesses and consumers to reflect at the following security aspects of IoT:

  • Device password – The Chinese firm, TP Link had been shipping routers that by default had the last 8 characters of their MAC addresses as the device password, making it easy for attackers to identify MAC address and hack into these devices. A terrible flaw in info security indeed. This vulnerability can be overcome by eliminating such default settings, and regularly updating passwords.
  • Data safety – Businesses are urged to retain data for as short a while as possible and then purge them, akin to shredding information when no longer required.
  • Provide security patches – In a rush to take the product to market, manufacturers often disregard the need for security in devices. Manufacturers should release security upgrades and inform their customers to install these to tighten security.
  • Implement security standards – The international community is coming together to create IoT security standards to adhere to, and to prevent cyber attacks. There are many associations that are working towards this. Manufacturers should consciously adopt a security first approach and uphold these standards.

While making IoT completely infallible is a difficult goal, it is definitely important to aspire for and ensure security in IoT. Vulnerabilities will exist, but at the end of the day, stakeholders need to work together to make IoT more secure in the coming future, where the world will be populated with around 50 million connected devices. And that’s a battle of a totally different magnitude, for which we aren’t currently equipped.

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