What the electronics industry must do to change that.

Ed.: This is the seventh of an occasional series by the authors of the 2019 iNEMI Roadmap. This information is excerpted from the roadmap, available from iNEMI (inemi.org/2019-roadmap-overview).

To realize the benefits and potential of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) or move toward Industry 4.0, the industry must overcome several challenges ranging from securing the factory equipment used to produce secure IoT-ready products to defining the cobotic dialogue so collaboration between humans and machines can be used to drive innovation, while providing efficiencies with minimal workforce displacement in this industry and those of its customers.

Aside from technical issues, ethical, geopolitical, economic and regulatory issues may affect the current and future state of the industry.

Hackers have already wreaked havoc by infiltrating connected IoT devices. Paradoxically, they usually aren’t targeting device owners, who often remain unaware of security breaches. Instead, the hackers may simply use IoT devices as starting points for attacks directed against another target. For instance, the 2016 Mirai attack, which used IoT devices to launch a distributed denial of services against gaming servers, ended up attacking the Internet infrastructure, causing shutdowns across Europe and North America that resulted in significant economic damage. As the IoT base continues to show double-digit growth rates, security is simultaneously a major industry challenge and a significant opportunity.

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