Internet of Things

The IoT (Internet of Things) may not technically be what it sounds like the first time someone thinks about it.  Honestly, the IoT is basically the interconnection via the Internet of a computing device embedded within an everyday object, which would enable them to send and receive the data.  To simplify the information even more, there is a computer inside an everyday object with connection to the internet, this would be considered an IoT.  For example, in the consumer electronics a newer model car falls into this category, whereas there are many other devices within the automation industry also.  The base structure of IoT comes down to sensors, services, applications, networks, and computers.  Imagine, the amount of waste, cost, and loss reduction could be done if everything within an industry was managed by a computer that knew everything.

Both the automotive and US Food & Drug Administration are being affected by the recent changes to inventory and product traceability.  As the day of logging inventory with a pen in one hand and a notebook in another, is old news.  Product traceability is among us and it will require a much finer detail in ways of which are fully traceable.  This process also allows companies to measure Overall Equipment Effectiveness to identify the weaknesses within the production processes.  Although these calculations can only be collected once the data is sufficiently delivered from the entire operation and then stored reliably.  To ensure reliability wired networks are used with automation systems, for the information to exchange at fast enough speeds, all the way from the sensors to the robots.  Considering, there is use of wired networks the IT department will have to work with the engineering department to gain access to the automation systems (Pye,Andy p. 65).

Within the food processing industry ensuring the machines running time is extended throughout its lifetime, utilizing preventive maintenance could allow this.  Whereas, if preventive maintenance is not used and a machine fails, an entire batch is lost, which is expensive and destructive to efficiency.  A recently developed preventive maintenance system call the FAG SmartCheck created by Schaeffler, distinguishes and reports the first vibrations before it ever starts to fail (Andy Pye, 2014, p. 68).  This allows the owner to start repairing the system before it has a major issue to begin with.  Currently, there is already an IT interface for a brewery and beverage sector and more recently a meat processing one.  They are now creating one called “WS Bake” which will be specifically refined for the bakery industry and capture information specific to the industry.

Networks within cars, dealerships, bakeries, and even an aquatic robot network, such as the Sunrise project.  This project is designed to gather and share data on freshwater environments utilizing underwater connectivity.  Considering, this will allow robots to work together and interact with one another, some call this ‘Internet of underwater things’.  Also, because these underwater robots are unable to work autonomously with instructions sent over the internet while communicating with each other.  Just in case one or more robots have trouble with signal and cannot communicate there will be a school of robots to carry a greater number of sensors in order to cover a larger area.

Future changes possible in our lighting systems at home, work, and everywhere else.  Consider saving upwards of eighty percent of energy compared to original lighting and that’s with the lights that are supposed to be saving us energy now.  Then these are supposed to be able to survey the surroundings and then transmit the information. Currently the first generation of smart lighting that is available is mostly designed for the commercial use which can be integrated within a buildings automation system.  Within ten years, this type of lighting system could become available for everyday consumers.  The next major step is to try and integrate a better sensor and a new type of function into the lighting system such as the ability of an occupant within the room to adjust the lighting with their movements and activities.

References

Pye, A. (2014). The internet of things connecting the unconnected. Engineering & Technology, 65-70.

Critique of A Review Article

Every day throughout history they have found technology changes as fast as you can buy the latest hardware or software.  Information security is actually quite younger than computers, as it was not needed immediately after their creation.  As the technology continues to rapidly evolve and develop so quickly, it is becoming difficult to keep up with the required internet security changes.  Originally, cryptography was used on a regular basis for encryption between users when messaging one another.  Although cryptography has now become inadequate over time.  This security vulnerability within cryptography of requiring a secret key allows a hacker the ability to decipher it easily.  Once the risks were found in cryptography due to the rapid growth in technology and the average humans understanding, steganography was developed in its place.  When utilizing steganography for communication it would embed the message within a cover medium, such as an image.

As the author discusses the techniques of image steganography, there is an introduction, comparison, background, reason, history, classification, benefits, drawbacks, just to name a few.  Throughout this article Chugh achieves displaying the resources to the readers, through the many strengths and weaknesses that will be dissected and explained.  Dissected information may include material, such as the data and sources provided, grammar, structure, authors argument, ideas, and support; as this article will be examined, evaluated, and reviewed entirely.  As image steganography studies and techniques are reviewed by Chugh, to provide a full review and explanation of the image steganography techniques available today.  When reading the article, it is obvious that he clearly utilized multiple sources such as studies, surveys, and journals.  Luckily, he was able to quote these resources well throughout his own article to strengthen the ideas of image steganography.

Providing the readers with background information on steganography such as the history of the word, originating from Greek meaning “covered or protected”, and rapid growth history.  As Chugh argues his point regarding history, “Due to the prohibition and restriction imposed by the government on cryptographic systems, steganographic technologies are a very important part of the future […]. (Chugh, 2013)”, this makes internet security growth very difficult to keep up with..  Chugh then recommends the argument towards the interest in image steganography when, “Publishing and broadcasting industries have become interested in techniques for hiding encrypted […]” (Chugh, 2013).  Steganography in general has actually been around a lot longer than you would have imagined dating back to 1499, as information hiding was extremely messy but useful for many reasons.  Chugh mentions many known historical figures who used some sort of information hiding (steganography) to send hidden message to another person.  Although, in the technological world today, there are many more ways to utilize steganography than there were in the 1800’s.  There are a total of four steganography categories, text, images, audio/video, and protocol; Chugh lists these out as a numerical list it allows the reader to see these clearly.  A small section mentions the process of steganalysis which is cracking the steganographic process, also known as hacking.

 As we move further along, Cugh’s strengthens his argument by discussing image steganography in further detail.  There are many diagrams to assist the readers understanding with the information given.  Image Steganography can be utilized by hiding information such as data in text, images, audio files, and in protocols.  The concept well known in the technical world of “What You See Is What You Get” applies in Image Steganography as well.  There are only two steps in the steganography system and it is completed.

Image steganography can be checked for effectiveness by comparing the stego image with the cover image.  To determine the effectiveness, the following are some factors that can be checked, robustness, imperceptibility, payload capacity, PSNR, MSE, SNR, NCC, and BER.  As shown in Cugh’s article in Figure 4, the two most popular schemes used for image steganography are spatial domain and transform domain.  Cugh continues to strengthen his article by providing more information on image steganography and different techniques.  Such as the Least Significant Bit Method, Masking and Filtering, Parity Checker Method, Gray Level Modification, Pixel value Differencing technique, Algorithms and Transformations, and each has their own advantages and drawbacks provided.  Similar there are benefits and drawbacks of steganography also, it would be beneficial to utilize cryptography with steganography.

Cugh provides readers with a current list of applications that utilize image steganography to give them an idea as to what we could do if it was progressed any further in the future.  Image steganography only hides the message, it does not actually encrypt the message, we would need to utilize cryptography with steganography to gain that ability.  Copyright Protection, which is used to ensure everyone knows that the steganography “item” is owned.  Feature Tagging, is similar to tagging on Facebook except it would be embedded, so it would contain the user or name of person and possibly their location.  Digital Watermarking is the ability to embed a digital watermark inside of an image in order for someone to verify the full authenticity.  The worst application yet, use by terrorists, steganography is and can be used at an extremely large scale by terrorist to hide messages secretly to spread terrorism across the country. (Chugh, 2013)

References

Chugh, G. (2013). Image Steganography Techniques: A Review Article. Acta Technica Corviniensis - Bulletin Of Engineering, 6(3), 97-104.

Viruses

Viruses can be very difficult to detect, analyze, and remove.  A few of the ways a virus can infect a computer is by contaminated media devices, through networking sites or emails, or even as part of a program.  Viruses can do many things once on the computer such as, simply sitting there, damaging data, destroying the OS, and even spreading to other devices. 

Three symptoms of which you may notice when your computer is infected with a virus is, programs loading slower than normal, system randomly shutting itself down or starting up by itself, and even strange files appearing or regular files disappearing. These are not all of the symptoms but definitely a few key markers to keep an eye out for. 

If you notice any of these symptoms or anything similar, it is best to take immediate action.  Make sure your antivirus software is up to date as these could have been the cause of the infection.  Once your antivirus software is fully up to date go ahead and run a full scan on the system.  This scan may take some time so step away to take a breather and get a cup of coffee to pass the time.