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The IoT: Intrusive or Indispensable Objects?

1.1. Introduction

Following Bill Gates' famous statement in the 1970s, "A computer on every desk and in every home," the world entered the era of computer science during the 1980s. This democratization became reality in developed countries, although not as much in third-world countries, which is a state of affairs identified by a digital and technological divide. New technological advances (computer science, telecommunications, miniaturization of electronics, etc.), led to the emergence of other solutions, new chips and electronic circuits, new computer systems and communication protocols, whose successful realization is the spread of mobile telephony and access to new compact and portable products. The smartphone is the prime example of this change; it now integrates all of the functions and services of a computer, making exchanges and communication accessible to a very large number of people. Moreover, with the connected watches that have appeared in the last few years, we are truly in the middle of the era of connected and portable devices.

Contrary to the development of computers and mobiles, whose concepts do not differ very much from one manufacturer to another (Apple, Windows, IBM, Dell, HP, etc.), the concept of the Internet of Things is broader and refers to a new way of living and managing current and professional affairs via the Internet. The environment is now more open for businesses and start-ups to innovate and offer new services and technologies. Nevertheless, the major players already have a head start in the area: like Cisco for networks, Google for the management of big data, Microsoft for Cloud Computing, Intel for micro-processors, etc. It is clear that development and investment in the IoT, the businesses mentioned above, promising a future that is radiant but which remains nevertheless to be discovered and which will reveal whether this was a revolution or a passing technological fad. One of the goals of these objects is the transformation of uses or even creating new ones.

1.2. The age of miniaturization and technological progress

The development of computers and mobile telephony has been the technological duo of choice for several years. This has allowed the arrival in the markets of innovative projects, amazing and increasingly spectacular miniatureization. The ENIAC1 was the first electronic computer, occupying an area of a hundred square meters made to imitate a mechanical calculator2. An ultra-miniature version of the ENIAC computer, which is the size of a single integrated circuit chip, was developed by a research team from the University of Pennsylvania (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1. The miniature version of the ENIAC

The appearance of smartphones has been accompanied by enormous technological progress in the last decades, from the testing of the first mobile telephone, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X3 in 1973, to Samsung's most recent ultra-comprehensive and light smartphone4, progress is exponential at different levels (Figure 1.2), computation power, design and ergonomics, energy consumption, etc. These advances have brought about a considerably profound change in the nature of the relationship humanity has with the objects and environment that surround it and a change to every person's everyday life and lifestyle.

Figure 1.2. The evolution of mobile telephony

1.3. The history of a digital ecosystem

The history of the Internet is enthralling and rich through its path of developing as an open system that is in perpetual motion. Despite its young age (it has been 25 years since the web was launched), the network has not stopped surprising us, thanks primarily to the work of communities of engineers and developers coming from different areas of study such as computer science, telecommunications and above all electronics. These are communities that connect to innovate and to respond to user needs in a collaborative and participatory spirit. Even if the origins and ideas of this network date back more than 50 years, a real enthusiasm was witnessed with the arrival of its best-known service, the web, which was put into operation back in the beginning of the 1990s. The revolution was provided by a multimedia navigation system with the development of the HTML language5 that could integrate text, images and above all links between documents and fragments of documents. This extension of the Internet has taken on a new dimension, offering new experiences and new uses, as well as new difficulties, for navigation and tracking in a space of very dynamic and occasionally extensible links [BAL 96].

Since its conception, several layers have been added to the first version of the web. We can distinguish three essential steps in its development:

• - the web 1.0: represented by the debut of the static and above all passive web of the 1990s, it offered basic navigation between pages of information whose purpose was documentary reference. This step was marked by the simplicity of the language used: HTML6;
• - the web 2.0, called the collaborative web, of the 2000s was the web of blogs, forums and CMS, with the web passing into active mode, with the users becoming actors and producers of content they played a contributing role and took forceful ownership of its new digital tools;
• - the web 3.0: represents the current web of which semantics and connected objects are the two principle technologies.

From the web 1.0 to the web 3.0, to hypermedia [BAL 96] to the hyperobject7, the Internet has gone from being based on information to being based on objects, from an Internet of links between documents, to one linking physical or digital objects (documents and information). It is a communicating and autonomous ecosystem, whose different objects are easily identified, and secure exchanges according to standardized protocols. These networks of objects8 already pose the problem of traces of data generated by the activities and exchanges of connected objects. Data to be exploited from the perspective of digital processing, according to approaches of knowledge engineering, another area concerned with the large masses of data otherwise known as Big Data.

1.4. Internet of Things, which definition?

The term Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a network that is more and more spread out, one of material objects connected to the Internet, identified and recognized, like all other traditional devices that we use every day, such as computers, tablets, smartphones, etc. Perceived these days as a new technological revolution, the Internet of Things is defined, according to Weil and Souissi [WEI 10], simply as:

"The extension of the current Internet to all objects able to communicate, directly or indirectly, with electronic devices that are themselves connected to the Internet."

An official definition of the IoT remains to be found, a job for the actors in the domain, even if the overall concept and its components are wellknown, such as the communication of data streams and associated protocols which remain a large open workshop.

Recently, tech giant Google has developed "Brillo", a platform for peripheral devices which handle the Internet of Things. It will be able to work with a very large optimization of the memory and processer, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, it is derived from the "Android" operating system. Other companies have invested in the area, with Samsung's Artik, the Agile IoT platform from the manufacturer Huawei, intended for the IoT. Microsoft is not excluded, with a new version of its Windows 10. This shows the interest that large technology companies have in this new extension of the Internet.

1.5. The security of connected objects: the risks and the challenges

Data security is a crucial point and one of the greatest obstacles to the development of the IoT on a large scale. As with the Internet, security is a workshop in perpetual evolution, the problem is posed and is transposed logically onto the protection of data sent and/or received by a connected object and becomes a great technological challenge for the different actors in this new ecosystem.

We regularly see that digital insecurity is a recurring question, especially on the Internet network, affecting the hacking of websites, message servers, e-mail accounts and this is often done with a remote takeover of machines. This insecurity logically extends to the IoT. Like a connected computer, any connected object could be subject to hacking, a takeover, the installation of spyware, etc. With the impossibility of controlling and limiting the development of this ecosystem, it is necessary to look for and suggest security strategies for protecting the networks of these objects and to fill in the gaps in security detected.

The role of the telecommunications sector was and remains primordial for safeguarding the communication of these objects (object-object or object-person), as for the Internet, it is their responsibility to make as big an effort as possible to put in place solutions in the areas of security. A role that is just as important as that of software developers.

1.6. Protocols, standards and compatibility: toward a technological convergence

In this emerging market, a long-awaited consensus between the industrial actors in the domain is yet to arrive. It would make many products compatible with each other for...