Pakistanis need to take full advantage of technology: experts

LAHORE: Pakistan needs to embrace Internet of Things (IoT), a concept still in its infancy in the country, wholeheartedly to reap enormous benefits the scenario provides, including cost cutting, better leverage of workforce and increase in competitiveness on global scale, experts said on Thursday.
Internet of things (IoT) has engulfed most economic fields enabling even the poorest economies to avail most sophisticated services through internet.
The experts pointed out that stakeholders benefitting from the technology think it beneficial for all aspects. For example, for an environmentalist, the sensors that create microbial awareness in cities are of crucial help.
People in transport business admire the connected cars without drivers and for healthcare personnel, delivering better care in the intensive-care units remotely or designing better drugs is the major revolution brought in by physical network.
Energy experts see a surge in installation of sensors for the lights in large buildings. “These sensors would turn on the lights only when people walk in, thus saving huge power and money for the enterprises.”
The use of IoT is also on rise in waste management, logistics and shipping containers.
However, security is a major concern for cyber experts who said, “The widespread use of IoT is providing attackers with a wide range of surfaces.”
An Information Technology (IT) expert Raza Arshad said, if the security of an airplane on auto pilot or the driverless cars is corrupted by someone, it could have grave consequences.
“IoT can scale up the attack surface for the attackers,” he said, “a connected door lock having a software breach could create bad security situation as well.”
Further, the IT specialist said data privacy is also another big issue. People connected through IoT are concerned about the security of data they use because the data is also available with the firm or the person through which IoT transactions take place. There is currently no legislation anywhere in the world to ensure security of personal data available online. “There is real business value in the data that spreads through IoT,” he said.
Another software engineer Saad Bin Tahir said technologies have been developed for interoperability of mobile networks but doing the same with IoT is challenging.
“The numbers of vendors that have to be mutually connected are huge,” he said, adding that “continued proliferation of sensors, and then the ubiquitous spread of networking - allowing experts to connect to these things without having to wire stuff up - is the major problem that needs to be resolved.” IoT is an enormous opportunity, which Pakistanis are ignoring, he regretted.
However, to enhance its penetration in the country, companies would have to invest in IoT based human resource. The results would be visible in a year or two but it would make companies globally competitive. On the government side, the main impediment to spread of IoT is bandwidth and policies.
“Pakistan would have to match the legislations and policies that are in vogue in the United States and Europe, to make the technology available in the country,” he added. He said policy makers should not try to prevent the future from happening but make policies that target the bad actors only.
Another IT player Saad Syed said businessmen should realize that the bar of impressing the customers has now gone over the head.
He urged them to analyze their plan and how different it is from the competitors and how do they plug into the ecosystem, before conducting business through IoT.
Besides, taking into account the business opportunity and the available technology as businessman do, all that is possible in the context of data governance and the technologies to enforce security, he added. The bigger corporation should interact with academia and start-ups and non-traditional innovators, and should reserve a healthy amount for research and development to invest in internal, lean start-ups. The expert further advised that it is not advisable to look towards a technology to resolve a problem before brain storming the problem thoroughly.
“Instead of being the platform owner it would be better to be inside someone else’s platform,” Syed advised.
The businessmen should implement their strategy through that platform and jump to another if they feel abused. The IoT provides tremendous opportunities but needs execution through right people, “You do not need enormous resources to achieve that,” he added.