Privacy is a sticky issue in the tech industry.

Just this morning I was reading a hot debate between two developers on the #techlondon Slack channel on the merits on having doctor-patient meetings over Skype and Facetime. How are patients supposed to trust that their data will stay confidential?

Answer: they don’t. Consumers will sometimes blindly trust a brand thanks to recommendations and hearsay. Even a pretty website can give the illusion of a fully secure system.

New Vulnerabilities

Experts express caution over the developing industry for interconnected devices. Mark Brown, who specialises in cybersecurity at Ernst & Young, remarks that “a whole new playing field of vulnerabilities will be created.”

The Internet of Things, however, mandates that consumers desperately need control over their own data.

Barriers for the Internet of Things continue to persist, however. It’s going to take time before the industry truly kicks off, and yes, there are inevitable issues involved.

Cloud is Not Enough

Cisco’s Tom Kneen admits the hardest part of being an IoT start up is not building the code or the infrastructure (although the SPARKL engineers may disagree!); it’s making the big corporates understand why IoT tech is essential for their businesses. Unlike most tech start ups, IoT-focused ones need a much more business-focused set of skills.

A typical customer for a start-up such as SPARKL might be a large enterprise or government department. Even finding the right person to talk to, in the right language, is a challenge for every company.

More and more companies are now devoting their time to digitising their systems in order to utilise the Internet of Things. These companies should also be focusing on creating partnerships with smaller start ups to solve the major security issues within the tech industry.

Maybe privacy isn’t dead after all.

Photo courtesy of boston.com.