Top 10 IoT Solution Providers Beyond Data

TOP 10 IOT SOLUTION PROVIDERS BEYOND DATA

TECHNOLOGY

Issue 12 Autumn 2018

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A WORLD-CLASS SOFTWARE EXPERT Cybersecurity Challenges of the Smart Home P.32

In Conversa on with the Newsmaker

Yannick Chammings Co-CEO Witekio

Let's get Familiar with : Internet of Things (IoT) P.48

P.36

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EDITOR’S CORNER

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n this era of rapid technological advancements, it is extremely common to see some new and innovative technology rising up the ladder of expectation and hype, only to fall down the dark pit of failure. But then there are some technologies, living up to its potential and going beyond our pre-conceived expectations. Internet of Things is one such technology that has stood apart from the crowd and has gone on to become one of the biggest technological trends globally.

The proliferation of the IoT technology has prompted the emergence of various solution providers, which are helping companies strive ahead of their market competition by providing innovative IoT solutions to their clients.

To highlight such solution providers, Beyond Exclamation has proudly come up with an issue titled “Top 10 IoT Solution Providers Beyond Data.”

As the Cover feature, we have Witekio, whose objective is to help its customers build successful innovations that bring value to the customer and last for long thanks to a stable and scalable architecture.

Editor in Chief CHRISTINE [editor@beyondexclamation.com]

Managing Editor JACK [jack@beyondexclamation.com]

Art Director VIJAYKUMAR [design@beyondexclamation.com]

Graphic Artist NICK [nick@beyondexclamation.com]

Project Manager JENNIFER [jennifer@beyondexclamation.com]

We also have other innovative IoT solution providers like Tinfoil Security, Paradox Engineering, FlyingBinary, and Urbiotica. In addition to these, we have some of the most thought-provoking articles from leading industry experts.

Development Manager JUSTIN [info@beyondexclamation.com]

CONNECT!

Jack London

www.beyondexclamation.com BeyondExclamation @BeyondEx Beyond Exclamation beyondexclamation

In addition to our print magazine, we also provide relevant industry news and updates, as well as some thoughtprovoking articles and blogs on our website. Make sure to follow the same as we at Beyond Exclamation are looking forward to interact with our readers. Let’s connect on the web!

What’s Inside...

Business Boulevard

B E O N 10

A World-class Software Expert

Omniscient Voyage

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Cybersecurity Challenges of the Smart Home

Excellence Causeway

20 Delivering more than Security

Newsmakers Locale

36 In Conversation with the Newsmaker

Younick Corner

Y D

36 Delivering Quality & Echoing Smartness

DeďŹ nitive Destination

42 Sticking True to a Vision

48 Let’s get Familiar with : Internet of Things (IoT)

A WORLD-CLASS SOFTWARE EXPERT

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oT trend has made software the cornerstone of countless innovative projects. It first started to affect the B2C areas and is now spreading into the B2B markets and complex industrial contexts. Adding intelligence into devices is a great opportunity to create added-value. Software now impacts many non-specialist companies who master their innovation process but not software projects. One company that stands out when talking about the software industry is Witekio. Its added-value is to bring a global software system vision, it boasts the ability to manage global software projects for its customers and has the knowledge of cutting-edge technologies.

Passionately Dedicated to Embedded Software Witekio has been dedicated to embedded software for 17 years. The company was formerly known as Adeneo Embedded, a low level software expert with a worldwide recognition for Board Support Packages development. It was the time when software was only considered to be an expert’s business.

With the emergence of the IoT trend, the company’s management team anticipated that software would get out of the ghetto and become key to many innovations and affect all markets.

Yannick Chammings Co-CEO Witekio Sébastien Chaillot Co-CEO Witekio

Our objective is to help our customers build successful innovations that bring value to the customer and last for long thanks to a stable and scalable architecture.

And when traditional industrial companies need to innovate including intelligence and IoT scenarios, they need a co-pilot to take care of the software part of their project with a global software system vision and know-how.

Adeneo Embedded accompanied that change by progressively evolving from a software expert to a software system expert, designing and engineering complete software systems for companies all around the world. The company changed its name to Witekio in 2016 to complete that change.

Helping Customers in All Stages of Development Witekio brings along a world-class recognized technical expertise on both low (OS, driver, firmware) and high level software (application, connectivity, cloud) associated with a usage knowledge on specific markets that allows the best choices in technologies and architecture for the best performance and security.

Witekio provides custom services for software development, integration, design, support, and training.

Witekio applies its rich experience to a wide range of embedded solutions for the automotive, handheld, industrial, medical, mobile, and wireless markets while working closely with the industryleading silicon and software vendors along with its passionate teams based in Europe, United States, and Asia. The company helps its customers in all stages of development to enable the success of their projects and maximize their efficiency. Witekio provides expertise, methods, and engineering teams that enable flexible, scalable and mature system software integration.

Leading the Global Software Integration of Connected Systems Witekio accompanies industrial clients of all sectors around the globe, like L’Oréal, Precor, Cerevast, Datalogic, Evoca, in the design and development of their innovative embedded IoT systems.

Witekio’s skillset spreads from the hardware to the cloud, from UX

design and system architecture to the development and integration of the full software stack. The company’s experts bring their knowledge into innovation projects to anticipate all crucial aspects like rea- time, power consumption, security, system update, connectivity, etc.

The profound knowledge of smart embedded systems, their software architectures and ambitious project contexts enables Witekio to play a leading role in the global software integration of connected systems.

Our Customer Products

The company’s rare mastery of lower layers and hardware compatibility, which is essential for high-performance systems, coupled with its expertise in applications and interconnectivity are a great asset to meet the challenges of today’s connected ecosystem.

As co-pilots of the customers’ projects, Witekio promotes team work to foster collaboration and idea generations. The company has developed its tools and methods to make sure that the team optimizes time to market. “Our project

managers, functional and technical, adapt our methodologies to our customers. We have developed our own methodologies to make sure we end up with the right product for the right customer. We are risk mitigators for innovators (market risks, project risks, technological risks, technical risks, etc),” Yannick Chammings, the Co-CEO of Witekio mentions.

Building Complex and Secure Global Software Systems Witekio counts among the few companies in the world that makes

tech consulting as well as full-stack software development while having deep roots into the low level software. Yannick explains “What I want to say is that many companies doing software come from web or mobile app with low level of expertise. That is quite unique and that’s why Witekio has more legitimacy and added value on complex embedded and IoT systems.” Its added value is to build global software systems that are complex, secure, and updatable for serious IoT/embedded devices.

Simply put, Witekio brings a

“Our vision is to become the number one copilot for all product managers willing to innovate, from R&D managers to Chief Marketing Officers.” software mindset with industrial track record.

For Witekio, 2016 was an important milestone. “When we changed our name and started to promote our new positioning, as pioneers we had all our historical partners and customers to convince.

It took some time to prove that it was a good move to get away from the technical expert position to the full system software co-piloting of innovative projects,” Yannick recalled.

The deep change in Witekio’s positioning also implied significant internal challenges in terms of the organization, processes, and staffing. “The first commitment was to grow fast and integrate new skills: functional project managers, scrum masters that were requiring new processes and methods. We decided also to change our offices to foster collaboration and team spirit. We made a huge effort to reinvent our processes and

methodologies for team management and find ways to adapt agile project methods to embedded software development. In short, we had to switch from an industrial SME in the software field into a software SME in the industrial field,” added Yannick.

Focusing on the Software Side Yannick believes that the competition is densifying as more and more tech companies (hardware, technology providers, etc.) are selling professional services to differentiate and create intimacy with their customers.

There will be an increasing need for actors who have a holistic vision of innovation and can help industrial companies develop and launch innovations.

“Today we bring a global software system vision to co-pilot innovative projects. We focus on the software side. Tomorrow we want to bring a global product innovation support, increasingly integrating with business innovation, UX consulting and ahead of the curve technological insight,” Yannick exclaims.

The Visionary Duo Yannick Chammings and Sébastien Chaillot are the Co-CEOs of Witekio. The duo brings a unique mentality to the company. While Yannick brings experience, software knowledge, and long term relationships within the ecosystem and a strong ability to manage the present, Sébastien, on the other hand, brings long-term strategic

thinking, business innovation methods, and start-up approach.

Yannick has been leading the company since 2009, when he created it to provide Software and Technology expertise to OEMs by developing complex embedded devices. Yannick brings more than 20 years of industry experience, a deep expertise in embedded

“Our experts can help you quickly find specific software solutions and fix any specific technical software issue.”

software and smart object technologies, combined with strategic thinking, which has resulted in leading the successful track of record of Witekio. In 2002, Yannick started building Adetel’s embedded software branch, which became Adeneo Embedded, the foundation for Witekio. In 2007, he set up the US operations and developed the overall activity

We are software system experts, we design, develop and integrate complex software systems for embedded and IoT.

expert consultant on innovation and growth strategies on numerous projects involving technologies and market or business model innovations.

before spinning it off and transforming it into Witekio.

As Witekio’s Co-CEO, Yannick, along with Sebastien Chaillot, have re-designed the company’s positioning and overall strategy.

Yannick is now managing Witekio’s market expertise and positioning, strategic partnerships, and operational management, while

Sebastien is dealing with structuration, strategy and animation of the management team.

Sébastien has a consistent expertise in growing startups and SMEs, creating business strategies and managing innovative projects. He implemented his skills as an entrepreneur in different sectors (Saas, industry, web) and as an

Sébastien is also the board member of several start-ups and SMEs, angel investor and member of the Strategic Committee of the digital B2B startups accelerator, Axeleo.

Additionally, he is a keynote speaker for several high schools and organizations on topics such as entrepreneurship, growth generation, management of upscaling or innovation’s marketing. Sébastien holds an Engineering degree from the National applied sciences institute of Lyon (INSA) and a Master’s degree in entrepreneurship from the HEC Paris.

Delivering more than Security

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aspects of your cybersecurity without learning new tools or adding burden. Tinfoil’s effortless SaaS cybersecurity solutions protect the hard work of DevOps teams across the companies that use it.

ost CISO’s at enterprise companies deplore their current security solutions, and are too jaded to deal with third party integrators -- especially for scanning web applications. Thankfully, Tinfoil Security has come in to restore your confidence, and make you and your team passionate about tackling cybersecurity again!

Ainsley Braun, the Co-founder and CEO of Tinfoil Security, states “We have focused on creating the most comprehensive, transparent and usable security products on the market. By focusing on developers, our products have streamlined the security process to provide the first line of security tools that easily integrate into any DevOps or SDLC process.”

Tinfoil Security understands that for large enterprise companies, development teams are hundreds to thousands strong, while security teams are often vastly smaller. Development teams continually test for functional bugs (using unit tests, integration tests, etc.), but due to the complexity and time it can take, there is little to no testing done for cybersecurity related issues.

The evolving company strategy During its initial years, Tinfoil was focused exclusively on SMBs, as it was an underserved market that sorely needed help with its application security tooling and processes. As the company grew and gained SMB market share, it discovered that enterprise organizations actually had very similar problems and lacked solutions to bridge the gap

Tinfoil brings much-needed tools directly into your development process, allowing developers to take on

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Ainsley Braun Co-founder & CEO Tinfoil Security

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between the vastly increased speed of development and the relatively smaller security teams. “We quickly realized that in order to steer Tinfoil Security in the direction of becoming a globally competitive player in this space, we had to switch our focus into the enterprise,” recalls Ainsley.

specific checks for each type, including all of the OWASP Top 10 Web Application Security Risks.

Additionally, they are always adding more as new zeroday vulnerabilities are discovered. The company scans each time a new version of its clients’ site is deployed, and can also log into any website, including SAML / Single Sign-On authenticated sites. Its patent-pending Login Recorder (available as a simple Google Chrome extension) allows companies to teach the Tinfoil Security scanner how to authenticate into their applications by recording their login sequence. Tinfoil constantly updates in realtime, so customers can be confident that their applications are being protected against the latest threats. The platform regularly incorporates new tests, and consistently scores higher than any other scanner on opensource benchmarks.

This strategy led the company into profitability, while still maintaining, supporting, and selling to tens of thousands of customers in the SMB market.

The profitability turnover was in large part due to its ability to adapt and implement an innovative strategy, while leading with an agile sales and operations process within the firm. The company made sure to keep track of and provide superior support to each and every customer, even as they reached tens of thousands customers. Through this constant involvement, Tinfoil designed its product for better UI and UX functionality, making it seamless, integrated, and usable for DevOps and development teams.

Security engineers and developers now have a security product they would not want to be without, ensuring the sustainability and growth of Tinfoil Security. ● Services that echoes quality ● Web Scanner: Tinfoil checks for over 60 classifications of vulnerabilities, with hundreds to thousands of

API SCANNER: The Tinfoil Security API Scanner is able to detect vulnerabilities in any API, including web-connected devices such as mobile backend servers, IoT

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devices, as well as any RESTful APIs. The few tools that are currently available lack coverage depth in API security, or are focused on acting as a firewall or unintelligent fuzzer. Vulnerabilities focused on authorization and access control concerns, or even web-like vulnerabilities, like XSS, manifest in different ways and with different exploitation vectors than they do for web applications. The security concerns for an API are fundamentally different from those for web applications. Tinfoil’s API scanner has been built, from the ground up, to focus on APIs specifically, rather than jury-rigging a web application scanner to be able to handle APIs half-well.

A transparent process Unlike Tinfoil’s competitors, the company is completely transparent in its process. The Tinfoil dashboard shows you real-time scan activity and updates, while outlining expert recommendations to the clients’ DevOps team for implementation using their current CI systems or issue trackers (i.e.

JIRA, Jenkins). To make the vulnerability fixing process even simpler, Tinfoil also produces single-click replay attacks and

single-click rescans, allowing developers to not only see the exploit live but know when they’ve fixed it within a minute, rather than waiting hours or days for a full new scan. This ensures the right developer can get the vulnerabilities fixed before they hit the public. Tinfoil’s security tools empower developers to build with security in mind and fix issues in real time, leaving the security team to focus on the bigger picture of their organization’s needs. The dynamic heuristic testing of Tinfoil allows it to find more web application vulnerabilities than anyone else, with fewer false positives.

Experience coupled with vision Since the launch of Tinfoil Security in 2011 the company has provided security to tens of thousands of customers, ranging in size from SMBs to the top Fortune 100. As CEO of the company, Ainsley makes sure to instill a company culture that prides itself on its community and giving back.

variety of vulnerabilities facing the majority of the SMB market and, unexpectedly, how many of the same security risks extended to large enterprise companies.

This led her to team up with fellow MIT alumnus Michael Borohovski to build Tinfoil Security. Ainsley is also a member of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG), which represents more than 400 of Silicon Valley’s most respected employers on issues, programs, and campaigns that affect the economic health and quality of life in Silicon Valley. She is a Board Member on the council for Women in Cybersecurity at California Technology Council (CTC) working on initiatives to help educate and attract more women into the industry.

Additionally, she mentors StartX teams as a Neighborhood Lead, sits on the Female Founders Board as a Member, and is part of their Selection Committee.

Ainsley realized that she wanted to be a leader and an innovator in the cybersecurity industry during her time consulting with Booz Allen Hamilton, where she worked upon graduating from MIT. As a member of their Strategic Technology and Innovation division, she worked largely with the United States Department of Defense (DoD) clients. It was here where she realized the vast number and

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A continuous zeal to improve and succeed Tinfoil Security builds cybersecurity solutions that empower DevOps teams. With the most comprehensive and usable security products on the market, Tinfoil streamlines your security needs with tools that easily integrate into any DevOps process or SDLC. The DevOps teams become the critical first line of defense, increasing bandwidth for security teams to prioritize and enhance more strategic security initiatives.

Tinfoil Security works to continuously improve the state for the industry’s tools in combating attackers around the world. Tinfoil Security’s vision is to empower Developers and DevOps teams with full and continuous cybersecurity integration, on any workflow system.

Delivering Quality & Echoing Smartness ith a vision that involves helping cities to become more manageable, efficient and sustainable, Urbiotica improves the quality of life of people and offers solutions for smart cities. In an exclusive interview with Beyond Exclamation, Josep Maria Torras, the CEO of Urbiotica, shares the journey, the inception story and the vision of the company.

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services, we contribute to a better real time information for the citizens to help them in their urban driving while also providing real time information and analytics to urban mobility managers in order to manage the daily operations better and help them in the mid/long term parking/mobility decisions in the city. Other solutions like urban noise monitoring or waste bins filling level control have also been implemented.

What prompted the thought of designing and developing the latest generation of wireless sensor systems?

The convergence of an increasing need of moving to a more efficient way of managing different services in the cities and the irruption of new technologies like IoT wireless communication protocols or data processing and analytics technologies was the trigger for convincing us to undertake this exciting project.

Despite this, it has been a long travel since we’ve understood how we have to use these new technologies for solving the real problems of our customers.

We believe there must have been a few obstacles along the road since the foundation? How has the company tackled the same?

Certainly, it’s a big challenge to create and develop a company like Urbiotica, starting from scratch and only with private funding. We are a company developing new services based on new technologies for a sector (public administration) that traditionally needs to take its time to adopt these new services, which sometimes means deep evolutions of their traditional internal processes. But we strongly believe that adopting these new products and services is not an option for them, it’s a must that they’ll have to implement to solve big challenges such as overpopulation, mobility issues or environmental aspects, among others. This strong vision of the Urbiotica team, including the employees and shareholders, is the most important point that allows us to overcome all the obstacles to build a solid company.

Tell us about the different smart services and solutions offered by Urbiotica?

Main solutions in Urbiotica focus on smart mobility, and especially on Smart Parking solutions. These solutions are composed by wireless sensors networks, our SW cloud platform and a suite of SW applications and services. With our sensor based solutions and

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Josep Maria Torras CEO Urbiotica

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How does Urbiotica stand out from its crowd of competitors? If you are to describe one word that separates Urbiotica from the competitors, what word that would be?

JMT: Reliability and customer service. No doubt, I think these are the 2 key points that allow us to be at the top of the competition.

Reliability of our products and solutions, demonstrated over these years, since our first deployments.

We’re highly recognized in the market for the good performance of our solutions, which is not easy considering we are talking about innovative products based on the latest technologies. We have solutions working today in very different and demanding environments such as Canada, Costa Rica or India, and with the same level of results. Customer Service is the other differential aspect. We take close and good care of our customers and local partners during the whole deployment and later operations of each project.

We’re really proud when customers like Amazon repeat our solutions for their different corporate facilities. This is thanks to our reliability and customer service.

understanding of many aspects associated to technology, business or operations for large infrastructure deployments, as well as a good view of what a global market means, like the one we’re involved in now. I also have experience working as the innovation director at a technological center, where I was involved in the deployment of new solutions and where I got in touch with the technological start-up world. I’m trying to bring together both experiences in URBIOTICA and keep the company in a leading position as a reference in the Smart Cities competition. Mainly what

Being the CEO of Urbiotica, what do you add to the company? Give a brief account of your industry experience and contributions.

I have a large experience in the Telecom industry working at international companies like Ericsson in different managing positions, which gives me a good

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has been most important for our success is the fact that the Urbiotica approach is not an individual one, but a collective project carried out by a fantastic group of employees and shareholders with huge technical and business talent.

How has the IoT landscape changed over the years? What are the future trends of the industry?

The IoT includes a very wide range of business opportunities, with a common technological base, but at the end with very different solutions. Solutions for industry 4.0 or for cities for example, may have very different requirements despite

wireless communications or big data systems being involved in all of them. In the last years there has been a clear increase of maturity of the technologies, which are much more prepared for being implementing in commercial products and with a clearer knowledge of which technologies are needed for each application.

The value chain of different types of companies in our smart city market is clearer every day, despite that there’s still some ways to go: there are big technological companies like Cisco, Huawei or big telecom operators with a very important roll pushing this new

emerging market, but it’s still soon to have a clear idea of their future position in the market related to the vertical solutions that companies like Urbiotica are developing. In my opinion in terms of technological trends related to products like ours, new technologies like NBIoT or LORA will have an important role in the future if we talk about wireless communication solutions. But our most important efforts are aiming at the software application layer implementation, as is, for example predictive information using the real time and historical information of our sensors systems: this is what

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will bring more value to our customers.

What can be expected from the company in the upcoming years?

What is the vision of Urbiotica?

JMT: Our vision and ambition is to become a technology reference for cities and industry, developing vertical IOT solutions based on sensing systems, device connection platforms and information management. With this we expect to bring value to our customers through improvement and innovation of their processes, products and services. We think that we are in a very good position to achieve this objective through our growth plan for the next 3 years. In terms of our solutions, we’ll go on investing in them in order to add new services for our customers, especially investing in software applications. In terms of business, our growth strategy is based on one hand in consolidating a good network of local partners, and on the other in cooperating with some global companies (especially Spanish) that can help us open new markets. For years we have had a close cooperation with some local partners in countries like Germany, Belgium or Canada and also we’re now implementing our first projects in countries like Argentina or India, where we expect to consolidate new partnerships soon.

Cybersecurity challenges of the smart home

Jack Warner Blogger & Content Marketer

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one are the days when you had to always leave the comfort of your bed to switch off the lights. Many might not even remember the last time they had to manually load songs onto their audio players.

smart devices also have a chink in their armor.

To put it better, they might be the best thing to have ever happened to you, but they could easily become the worst technology you have ever been exposed to, too.

Understanding IoT

That is not because of neglect or not having these items, but because there is now an easier way to do it. For many, this ‘easy’ way is via some specialized apps and of course, specially designed set of equipment.

Basically, IoT stands for Internet of Things. Like most other concepts in the world of technology, the name says almost everything you need to know about them.

Defined under the large canopy of IoT, this technology is now helping people run smart homes. Besides making lives easier though, these

The principle of IoT lies in the embedding of ordinary everyday ‘things’ with chips and other hardware components that allow them to function

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in part as a minicomputer. This technology has left the industrial scale and come into our homes too.

Today, it is not out of place to see a TV that gives ya real-time updates on the weather and a baby monitor that informs you of whatever is happening in your home, even if you are not there.

These IoT-items work with an internet connection. That allows them to pull the data you need, process them and then, relay the information to you via the chosen media.

How do smart devices threaten cybersecurity?

In the name, you could not have missed out the term ‘internet.’

As explained above, this means the things we are talking about would need to be on an internet connection to either work alone or with other connected units in the home.

That is where the problem comes in.

An experienced hacker could easily intercept the source of the internet connection. On getting in, they would be able to intercept any and all communications (commands, reports, etc.) happening between you and your smart devices.

They can even hijack the

devices and manipulate settings, data, etc.

There is a bigger problem for units that are highly connected to one another on the same network. All the hacker would need to do is find the unit with the least security protocol in place and hack that. Once that happens, they will be able to infiltrate the other devices – since they are now inside the network as an authorized user.

Protecting your privacy and security the easy way Just because IoT devices pose as a security exploit does not mean you have to give them up entirely. They are here to make our lives better, and they are certainly here to stay. What you can do, though, is make sure you set up a secure connection for all these devices.

Try to limit the number of devices on your network to the minimum. That way, an unauthorized person can only access a select few of this smart device ecosystem you are running if they got in at all.

For an all-encompassing solution, getting a VPN will do trick. A good VPN will protect all of your data from snoopers and even throw them off your trail with its location service.

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Conclusion It is true that you are left exposed to smart devices, but that is only if they aren’t managed well. The most recommended approach to staying safe while enjoying the broad spectrum of functionality they bring on board is by using a VPN. Moving forward, which one of these practices do you already have in place to secure your smart device networks/ which one are you planning to adopt soon?

About the Author Jack is an accomplished cybersecurity expert with years of experience under his belt at TechWarn, a trusted digital agency to world-class cybersecurity companies. A passionate digital safety advocate himself, Jack frequently contributes to tech blogs and digital media sharing expert insights on topics such as whistleblowing and cybersecurity tools.

In Conversation with the Newsmaker

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developing cutting edge technologies for Smart Lighting, Smart Cities and any other smart environment. In an exclusive interview with Beyond Exclamation, Gianni Minetti, President and CEO, Paradox Engineering took us on the journey of the company and beyond.

Since 2015, Paradox Engineering is a part of leading global provider of Electro Mechanics Solutions™ with a notable history and track record of technology excellence, MinebeaMitsumi. Owing to Paradox Engineering’s vision and innovation capabilities, the Group is accelerating its success in the IoT market and

What prompted in 2005 the thought of a one-stopshop business model providing virtual networks to connect any customer industrial operation site and enable remote and condition monitoring programs?

Probably nobody talked about the Internet of Things back in 2005, but we realized industrial companies could achieve highly relevant results if collecting, transporting, storing and delivering data generated by equipment and plants. Paradox Engineering was born as a telecommunication company and engaged in the niche but very interesting market of industrial data transportation. We developed a unique set of technologies to enable telemetry applications, remote and condition monitoring solutions, supporting industrial businesses in unlocking the value of their data. In a few years, we could connect about 1,000 sites in 70 countries all over the world.

aradox Engineering was founded in 2005 as a telecommunication company to serve the niche, yet, very interesting market of industrial data transportation.

Headquartered in Switzerland, Paradox Engineering primarily created a one-stop-shop business model, which provided virtual networks to connect any customer industrial operation site and enable remote and condition monitoring programs.

Later, the company pushed the concept further by designing and engineering pioneer technologies to implement unique interoperable and highly scalable network infrastructures for industrial and urban application. Moreover, Paradox Engineering’s goal was to unlock the value of data of smart industrial and urban networks in the IoT age and for the same, the team came to offer an integrated portfolio of future proof solutions.

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Gianni Minetti President & CEO Paradox Engineering

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What are the services and solutions offered by Paradox Engineering?

Today, we are a technology company specializing in Internet of Things platforms for smart urban and industrial environments. Our solutions enable Cities to improve quality and efficiency of a number of public services (street lighting, parking facilities, energy distribution, public Wi-Fi, traffic video surveillance, etc.) by connecting all related field objects (street lamps, parking lots, meters, Wi-Fi hotspots, IP cameras, etc.) to the same wireless network. These devices are no more dumb and isolated, but can be monitored and actioned from a central web-based software platform. Benefits for City managers span from energy saving to greater efficiency, from reduced traffic congestion to increased public safety, up to the opportunity of designing new applications for lively and dynamic urban communities.

What have been the biggest challenges of the company thus far? How has it tackled the same?

Evolving from a pioneer technology company to a global Internet of Things player is not such easy. We succeeded in merging our strong innovation capabilities with the high-quality large-scale manufacturing resources and worldwide market presence of MinebeaMitsumi Group, which acquired full capital

and assets of Paradox Engineering SA in 2015. Our Japanese parent company has a history and track record of technology excellence and, with Paradox Engineering, it is accelerating its success in the IoT and smart markets.

The rising growth of Internet and its application have prompted the emergence of more IoT companies. How does Paradox

Engineering stand out from its crowd of competitors?

It’s first of all a matter of competences. We have a solid engineering DNA and a strong know-how in data and device management platforms, data collection systems, radio design and wireless sensor networks. But it’s probably our technology vision that makes the difference. We are riding the IoT as a natural evolution

City of Chiasso, in Switzerland

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of the Internet, and sharing with our customers and partners a strong commitment for open standards.

Proprietary and legacy technologies are nowadays obsolete: no web, smartphone or app as we know them today could exist or have this degree of development ad diusion had their standards been proprietary. As a technology provider who has always been

agnostic to the application, we focus on the development of smart wireless networks supporting any kind of ďŹ eld device, independently of the make. Fully advocating open standards, City managers can trust Paradox Engineering to truly foster the Smart City transformation.

What can be expected from the company in the upcoming years?

What is the vision of Paradox

Engineering?

Cities will be more and more challenged with the need of providing quality services to a growing population, ensuring higher quality of life and fostering local economy, at the same consuming less resources.

Technology will therefore be more and more important to develop sustainable, eďŹƒcient, livable and safe urban communities. Paradox Engineering and MinebeaMitsumi will continue to develop innovative solutions for Smart Cities, exploring new technologies and standards to provide customers with future-proof systems and devices.

Meet the maestro Passionate and eclectic technology expert, Gianni Minetti has about 25 years of business experience in information and telecommunication systems, with peculiar interests in Internet of Things, smart technologies, blockchain and cryptography. In 2005 he founded Paradox Engineering as the vehicle for bringing his unique technology vision to the market through pioneer IoT platforms for Smart Cities and Smart Factories. He is currently President and CEO of the Company, which has been part of MinebeaMitsumi Group since July 2015. Gianni is also chair of the Southern Alps Chapter of the Crypto Valley Association, active investor and advisor to several blockchain venture projects. He is based in Ticino, Switzerland.

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Sticking True to a Vision

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“FlyingBInary is recognized amongst GovTech’s Top 100; a recognition for the transformation that we have delivered for the UK government. These GovTech services now deliver transformation across the world and across many sectors, not just for the UK Government,” explained the CEO of the company, Dr Jacqui Taylor.

FlyingBinary is a web science company; a discipline that was founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee to create the fundamental research needed to understand how to deliver his vision for the world wide web, “It’s for everyone”.

Steering ahead of the challenges Since its formation in 2009, FlyingBinary has used the engineering expertise of its Founders to architect its interoperable cloud services for the Internet of Things.

This has been a continuous research and development effort, refreshing services on a 6 monthly cycle based on a deep understanding of the opportunity and change underpinned by the Internet of Things. A punishing schedule relying on the expertise of FlyingBinary’s Founders to architect services which meet a client’s need, in advance of their current roadmap.

ever in human history has there been a phenomenon like the world wide web, a societal level change enabled by technology which affects all our lives.

Unlike digital transformation this required a new level of thinking on the deployment technology needed to deliver this web science vision, hence came forth the FlyingBinary mission to change the world with data and technology.

The company offers 25 secured and accredited cloud services which deliver Big Data, Internet of Things and Smart City innovations. These interoperable services were originally built to deliver transformation for H.M. Government in the UK as it embraces the opportunity that digital transformation brings.

“No company can expect to deliver transformational data and technology changes in this domain without expecting the existing incumbents to do all they can to

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Dr Jacqui Taylor CEO FlyingBinary

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stop progress, by any means possible.

This is varied from stealing IP, attempting to discredit the work we do with their existing clients through to direct challenges to the reputation of FlyingBInary’s Founders.”

Amidst all these challenges, arguably the largest challenge was for Jacqui, who as a female CEO and Founder has had to navigate a technology industry where the vast majority of leadership is male. It is rare to find technology leadership who understands that the internet of things enables technology to bring societal change, and Jacqui brings-in a unique perspective as a result of her gender.

this unique way. In 2017, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Science in recognition of her work as an International web scientist.

Jacqui brings enthusiasm for the WebScience agenda and the thought leadership to articulate the opportunity which exists for the Internet of Things. She creates the roadmap for change for clients and has architected the self-service models FlyingBinary services

Jacqui has always paved the way to demonstrate the value diversity brings, whether as a keynote speaker across the world, a mentor to Founders or by building the partner ecosystem to support the work FlyingBInary does across the world.

A leader with unmatched capabilities Jacqui has an engineering background, in aerospace. After graduating she was a key member of the British Aerospace team which established software engineering principles and standards in the industry. Headhunted at 25 to deliver this innovation in the retail industry she formed her first technology company. Later architecting payment innovation for the UK Banking sector enabled her to later deliver transformation across the UK Health service, she remains the only technologist to deliver transformation across the entire UK National Health Service. The creation of the Web inspired her to explore the fundamental changes which could be achieved by leveraging technology in

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deliver. Importantly these services go beyond data, go beyond delivering capability, they deliver capacity for organizations looking to leverage the Internet of Things.

If you have heard Jacqui speak you will be familiar with her “unicorn” slide driven from the FlyingBInary mission to deliver the webscience vision “It’s for everyone”. This is not restricted to those who can build and deliver technology, but it is

technology which will improve all our lives.

A pioneering name in WebScience The FlyingBinary’s USP is that its services are accredited by the H.M. Government. The Internet of Things is an engineering challenge which requires a new approach to deliver value. FlyingBInary has shown between 2 times up to a 60 times return on investment (ROI).

The one word which separates FlyingBinary from all of its competitors is “WebScience”. Tim Berners-Lee created WebScience 10 years ago to explore the science underlying the Web from a sociotechnical perspective including its mathematical properties, engineering principles, and social impacts.

FlyingBinary delivers all 25 secured and accredited services using its 14 years of fundamental WebScience research. The company has over 34

million citizens who contribute to the research it does. It can contact citizens in any city in the world and get a global response to the likely success of any innovation being planned, before it is launched online.

Coupled with its ability to deliver services at web scale this gives us a unique advantage over all our competitors.

Continuing to transform FlyingBinary is preparing for the launch of a new initiative, 1 Million Founders. The company was founded with 249 other companies in Tech City in the UK. Tech City, a virtual city has been the number one global digital hub for the last three years.

“In TechCity, we founded our companies at the start of the economic crash, arguably the worst conditions in living memory,” recalls Jacqui.

Today, there are over 1.5 million companies in the UK located in 33 virtual hubs, which is an amazing achievement to say the least. “At FlyingBinary we have transformed our Tech City business model in the light of the UK’s decision to exit from the European Union. We will be launching technology to support 1 million founders adopt our IoT success plan to take advantage of this new economy. We plan to create a new IoT ecosystem which delivers the societal change we all want to see; we call this the Empathy Economy,” concludes an optimistic and upbeat Jacqui.

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Let’s get Familiar with : Internet of Things (IoT)

Yash Mehta Founder Dataworm

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As seen in the above infographic by Statista, consumer spending on IoT will touch a whopping mark of $1.5 trillion in 2020. In the year 2012, the market adoption of IoT was as low as 8.7 billion devices, it shot up to 20 billion devices in 2017.

According to NASSCOM, global IoT revenue is expected to grow from $0.9 trillion in 2014 to $3 trillion in 2020. Indeed, startups are playing the biggest role in enabling IoT services in the consumer as well as the industrial segment. So the time has already arrived, wherein IoT is proving its worth.

he Internet of Things (IoT) is a generic recognized trend that is gaining vogue with time. IoT is transforming many industries, including healthcare, transportation, utilities and many more, thereby, driving them to raised levels. With exponential growth in the internet usage, the upcoming advancements in technology are ‘Internet of Things’. The IoT will have a huge impact on our lives in the coming five years, as people and businesses are now transferring towards IoT. Some technology experts call it the ’Next Digital Revolution’ while others proclaim it to be the ’Next Generation of Internet’. Undoubtedly, the future with IoT is brighter, and the market too agrees with the same. It is making our lives more efficient and easier.

Complexities in driving IoT IoT is a blend of hardware, software and elements that include cloud infrastructure, data analytics, edge device hardware with embedded software, which are mandatory to any business that needs to adopt IoT. IoT applications will optimize, innovate and transform consumer products as well as business processes.

Unsurprisingly, the adopters require countless technical personnel, as it is highly unlikely for a business to have a single developer, possessing all

Is migrating towards IoT worthwhile?

The spending on IoT, by industries like manufacturing, transportation and logistics, healthcare, retail, government, utilities, energy and natural resources, insurance, for the year 2015 was $10 billion and is likely to reach $40 billion in 2020.

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technical skills. Also, the cost of hiring groups of technicians is unattainable. There are a number of complexities involved for developers and businesses alike.

For developers, elements like hardware sensors, middleware and gateways must be linked to have a connection, and businesses that want to develop IoT solutions are constantly looking for developers with skills in machine learning, AI, design for data, automation, IP networking and hardware interfacing.

Therefore, it becomes very challenging for the companies to adopt IoT. The executives believe that IoT skill gap is preventing businesses from being able to exploit new capabilities. The study, “The Impact of Connectedness on Competitiveness”, was based on a global survey of 350 executives from renowned global enterprises such as Airbus, Balfour Beatty, Philips Lighting, GE, Whirlpool and Hitachi, and concluded that almost one-third (31%) of the executives said that their organization faces a ’major skill gap’ for IoT readiness, while only 7% had most of the skills in place.

Is this the reason why potential adopters are not integrating IoT technology into the business? The real question is how will the companies undertake IoT projects in that scenario? Since there is no clear panacea for skill gap ills, smart contract platforms are aiding the industries in a way for IoT

development. They are computer programs that can automatically execute an agreement based on programmed logic. Stellar, Techracers and Hurify are few smart contract platforms which assist the industries to undergo projects and secure their data in the decentralized registry. Stellar is a common financial platform that is designed to be open and accessible to everyone. It is a decentralized network where anyone can run a Stellar node code, validate the transaction and are executed only when certain constraints like batching and multisignature are accepted by all the members involved. Techracers provides a private blockchain application that helps industries like healthcare in reducing their infrastructural cost and operational cost to a great extent. They deliver customized solutions to businesses in a timely manner and offer solutions in smart contracts based on Ethereum.

Whereas, Hurify is also based on Ethereum which aims at filling the gap between the demand and supply of IoT space. By providing an IoT-specific marketplace, they connect the companies which require variety of services from numerous skilled IT workers throughout the lifecycle of an IoT project. This ensures reliable and accurate services from a pool of experts engaged by these platforms.

As IoT has proved its worth and has an even greater scope in the coming future, companies are now trying to inject IoT into their industries by collaborating with

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other companies. The information generated by IoT can lead to design changes that differentiate businesses and products in market place. For this very reason, Dell and Intel collaborated to create the Dell IoT lab. Companies are trying to fill the skill gap for IoT development by collaborating with other leading companies. However, the companies which need to drive IoT into their industries can now heave a sigh of relief, as aforementioned platforms provide them with a convenient solution.

End of the Line IoT has been set to become one of the essential strengths of every business sector by 2020, as established by various industry experts and analysts. The shift towards IoT will result in improved and efficient businesses. Use of IoT enabled devices, will make enterprises adopt better technology in their businesses and upgrade their business processes. This would turn out to be an opportunity for better efficiency and quality man-hours. Embracing IoT technology in forthcoming years will become the need of hour. Thus, it has now become vital for industries to get skilled developers.

Therefore, the industries are now finding various alternatives that enable them to flourish in the market.

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