Until quite recently, the concept of the connected home was the stuff of novels and TV shows, reaching the public as part of a vision of a futuristic world in which people have control over virtually all aspects of their home life by speaking or pushing a button. However extraordinary the idea may once have been, it has in recent years taken flesh, becoming something not only possible but probable — a technological inevitability.
Until quite recently, the concept of the connected home was the stuff of novels and TV shows, reaching the public as part of a vision of a futuristic world in which people have control over virtually all aspects of their home life by speaking or pushing a button. However extraordinary the idea may once have been, it has in recent years taken flesh, becoming something not only possible but probable — a technological inevitability.
It is quintessentially human to want to make life at home easier. And it is not a modern human desire either. Stories of the ancient Romans, with their innovations in building materials and plumbing, attest that, even millennia ago, one of the marks of an evolving society was in the time and energy it invested in its home innovations.
Before the emergence of the Internet of Things, a homeowner was ahead of the curve if they had a home security system in place. Bonus points went to those who had any combination of (a) lighting set to a timer, (b) a remote-operated garage door, and (c) the Clapper. Gradually, as technology became more affordable, companies began developing home automation products. Product popularity resulted in more investment, which in turn resulted in even cheaper and more efficient products.
With 2020 on the horizon, the connected home has reached the point where people barely notice it anymore. It is now possible for consumers to control their heating and cooling, lighting, TVs, alarms and doors from controllers and smartphones.
Concept on the rise
One prominent market research report predicts the global home automation system market to leap from a value of US$39.9 billion in 2016 to USD 79.6 billion by 2022. This ties in with what Cisco predicted in its 2013 paper "The Internet of Everything: Global Private Sector Economic Analysis" that:
"…$14.4 trillion of value will be ‘at stake’ over the next decade [2013 to 2022], driven by ‘connecting the unconnected’ (people-to-people, people-to-machines, machines-to-machines, etc.) via the Internet of Everything. Value at Stake is the potential bottom-line value that can be created, or that will migrate among private-sector companies and industries, based on their ability to harness the Internet of Everything over the next decade. Cisco predicts that this Value at Stake will be $14.4 trillion for companies and industries worldwide over the next 10 years. More specifically, over the next 10 years, the Value at Stake represents an opportunity to increase global aggregate corporate profits by about 21 percent. In other words, from 2013 through 2022, $14.4 trillion of value (net profit) will be ‘up for grabs’ for private-sector businesses globally — driven by the Internet of Everything (IoE)."
This just-beginning boom comes as no surprise considering the ubiquity of smartphones and the widespread use of other “always connected” digital devices such as tablets. It is natural that people should go from asking if their device can connect them to their friends, colleagues and media to asking if it could connect them to the place where they spend most of their time.
The smart home of the future
All but the most stubborn Luddite would agree that smart homes make people’s lives better, or at least easier to manage and more convenient. The idea that you can control such “home factors” as temperature and lighting from a handheld device would have been difficult to conceive of even a generation ago. But smart homes are not just “cool.” Set up the right way, they can provide excellent security, whether that security is in the form of a standard burglar or fire alarm, auto-door locking and unlocking, auto-calling of police and fire services, and smart lighting.
As a concept, the smart home is coming into its own. At a time of now widespread broadband connectivity, and the proliferation in the home of devices such as smartphones, tablets, and smart TVs — many of which can control home appliances such as cameras, sensors, smart meters, lighting and HVAC — it is now technologically possible to activate a connected home.
iotega security
In the Wikileaks age, security is never far from the mind of homeowners considering a connected home system. The iotega wireless security system answers this gigantic question with robust PowerG technology and end-to-end 128-bit AES encryption. In a 2008 paper about encryption, data storage company Seagate Technology concluded that:
- 128-bit encryption is sufficient to address all commercial and non-top secret government applications;
- the vulnerabilities for data leakage are not due to encryption key size when 128-bit keys are deployed, but to software, key storage and authentication vulnerabilities; and
- when all issues and vulnerabilities around software, key storage and authentication are addressed, the data protection solution that deploys 128-bit AES encryption provides comprehensive security for virtually every need.
Seagate put an exclamation point on the point that 128-bit is sufficient by setting up the following scenario:
- Every person on earth (seven billion) with 10 computers
- Each computer capable of testing 1 billion key combinations per second
- On average, a key can be cracked after testing 50 percent of all possibilities The conclusion is powerful: that the earth’s population would be able to crack one encryption key every 77 septillion (77,000,000,000,000 ,000,000,000,000) years.
For more information on how iotega can secure and connect your home, visit the website
here.