The Internet of Things

If everything is connected, the playing field between large and small companies should level out. All companies now have the opportunity to conduct product development with direct feedback and communications with their potential customers during the product development lifecycle. Social media has made this a much simpler task. More reliable data is now available in real time. The result of the interconnected platforms is a product development process customized as per the changing tastes of the people and, presumably, this process can provide a better product. With social media, you can easily post surveys and research and development information on social networking sites and launch prototypes to gauge feedback.

This changes how companies launch products and even speeds up the process. But speed can sacrifice security in the race to get a product to market. This may produce more security holes if web applications no longer go through long testing phases. With social network vulnerabilities, customer confidential data stored in these cloud services can be at greater risk, which we discuss in more depth in the next section of the chapter.

Social media also makes doing a lot of things less expensive. If your product does not need huge advertising dollars for magazine ads or television ads, your budgets change, and presumably your marketing budget decreases. A small company can compete with large company in marketing a new product using social networks. The expense changes so significantly that more products from smaller companies can make it to market. Many companies formally appoint social media managers (Community Managers) to handle social marketing through social media sites, gaining insights from users. This new role may add a new headcount to the budget but there are numerous areas for cost savings using social media platforms. Twitter and Facebook Fanpages are free! The winners will be those who can engage with their communities, not those who can spend more on marketing.

The next generation of Internet applications using Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) will be able to communicate with devices attached to virtually all electronic objects. This system should, therefore, be able to identify any kind of object and could potentially encode 50 to 100 trillion objects, as well as follow the movement of those objects. Cellular and emerging technologies such as Internet television, tablets, networked appliances, and ebook readers are major contributors to this growth.

Collaborative communities are developing around this interconnected world with social media acting as the catalyst in the activation, development, and deployment of individual community initiatives. These communities, though in their infancy, are driving the development of hundreds of products, services, policies, and even governments. A good example of this use of social media is the revolution in Egypt. Twitter and Facebook were two main sources of communication. The government even attempted to shut down Internet access to block communications. The use of social media tools in the Arab Spring revolutions in the Middle East inspired Salesforce.com’s CEO, Marc Benioff, to unveil new social networking tools (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/31/us-salesforce-idUSTRE77U5PC20110831).

With this much growing influence, it is essential that we understand the role security will play in this rapidly evolving Global Brain.