It doesn’t matter if you are a utility company in the UK, Europe or beyond, the issues you face daily in the boardroom are the same, writes Adrian Crawley, the regional director of Northern EMEA for Radware. How will you become more efficient, save money and give the customer more value and differentiate your brand?
Many are turning to the Internet of Things (IoT) to answer the questions. But, from the conversations I have with directors, I can’t imagine for a minute there are boardrooms discussing their explicit IoT strategy. Instead it’s more likely they are waxing over the technology they will use for remote diagnostics and the savings it will make, or their smart meter strategy and how they will engage the customer.
All pose a complex web of integration of systems and networks, adjustments to and the introduction of new processes, and in some cases a significant branding exercise to explain to the customer the benefits of the specific IoT technology that will sit in the home.
That last part is crucial. As when it comes to IoT, it’s likely that it will be a cohort of the customer base that will be prepared to use new technology in its early stages. Not everyone will firstly understand the purpose of the shiny box that can read energy consumption, and secondly, not everyone will be trusting of it.
Trust is a major concern for the consumer. In fact, City University, London, announced in March that it would be conducting a major living study on how trust can be established in the IoT ecosystem.
It’s an essential part of understanding how IoT can integrate into everyday life, without intrusion or disruption. Before now, people worried the back gate would be left open by the meter reader leaving the house insecure. Now people want to know that they are not letting a robot into their home that will unleash viruses and open their personal life up to the outside world. Scare stories in the press will sway judgment and it leaves utilities with a PR battle to win over hearts and minds.
That’s made more tricky when you consider that the overall supply chain won’t be owned end to end by the utility. Applications will be produced by development houses, the kit produced by specialist manufacturers and, for those that don’t own a communications network, a third party will be required to transmit the data back to the billing systems if it’s a consumable, or to the ERP tools if it’s a part of the network maintenance toolkit.
That’s obviously a very simplistic view of the world. But it does illustrate a point. The more things that are added to a network, the more risk there is. And of course the more suppliers there are, the more the ownership for the risk is diluted.
If we just take Nest-style thermostats as an example, they are considered easy pickings for hackers who can not only get into one home, but use algorithms to string millions together to create an army that will either target the consumer or used to run an intensive denial of service attack against an organisation. It what we call capillary networks and poses new risks of exponential scale.
The dilemma for utilities is therefore who will own the security overall. While the consumer will look to the utility, the behind the scenes assurances need to be shared between the parties involved.
The second part of Adrian’s blog will appear on IoT global network shortly.