DID YOU KNOW TORMACH SELLS PLASMA TABLES?

Premium features make better parts.

• Closed-loop servo motors for reliable accuracy

• Floating head with Digital Torch Height Control that help make cuts to uneven surfaces like corrugated metal

• Standard breakaway torch holder with collision detection to minimize machine damage if things go wrong

• Minimized run times with fast rapids (1,000 in./min., 400 in./min. cuts) and acceleration (30 in./sec.²)

• Integrated water table mounted on sliding rails, ideal for cutting pipes and larger parts

• The only plasma table built with PathPilot, Tormach’s award-winning CNC controller, and access to PathPilot HUB, Tormach’s browser-based version of PathPilot required physical security. I don't need security in the machine because I had physical security. a s you start getting “dumb” [character-based display functionality only] terminals out in the world, you start needing passwords and logins because you want to keep me from stealing all of your compute time which was the original kind of hacks and tweaks on mainframes.

From mainframes we then went to workstations. Workstations, like those from Sun Microsystems, were on desktops and moving the computing to the edge. Then you got to the P c s beyond that. Then the laptops and then your phones and now we've got IoT. That computing edge continues to extend. The interesting thing is, as we move that edge out, the functionality of the first laptops is probably less than what we had in the first cell phones, which is also probably about what we have in a lot of our IoT devices. So, think about that for a second. We have a tremendous amount of functionality in our IoT devices. h ow many of them are properly secured?

The answer is not enough of them. a nd r FID tags without security, most of them out there, allow a broad range of attacks. But you can make sure that they're protected or shielded, there are ways to do so. Now we start thinking about cybersecurity. The basic approach is all about cI a - confidentiality, integrity, authentication. h ow you achieve that evolves and changes, and it's always the human forgetting to configure it properly, or clicking on that phishing email, doing something they're not supposed to be doing or not doing something that they really needed to do. That allows the attackers to come in. The intersection of cybersecurity and data science is all about automating a lot of that.

The original paradigm for security is trust, but verify. This worked for decades, but it worked in a non-completely networked world where mainframes existed and I knew everybody else that was using that mainframe. I knew everybody else that was on that specific network. During that era, there were only a million computers on the entire Internet. That was pretty easy from a security perspective. When there are billions and billions of items, and the Internet of things is there, you don't know everybody. But you're highly connected. You are very, very vulnerable because somebody all the way on the other side of the world can log into your machine. Doesn't matter how many firewalls you think you're behind or anything else. Someone can get there, someone can attack you. That is the problem of today.

In the trust but verify model, which is what we had at the beginning, that works great because I trust you because I know you and then I'll verify that you haven't mucked around with my account or otherwise changed things on me. The problem today is you don't know everybody. You should not be trusting everybody. a nd you really need to go to a verify-but-don’t-trusteven-after-you-verified world to consistently and continually verify.

That is continuously authenticate, to make sure that you're on the access list, authenticate on a continuing basis. This whole concept of zero trust is really a step in that direction. But today's tools and cyber tools are not in that mode, which is why you can download malware, even though we know it's malware. We try to stop it from running after it’s been clicked, which makes absolutely no sense. That is literally security today. We are going to let you download it, but then we will stop it from running.

The Zero Trust concept is actually starting to change that approach but it's going to be a very, very slow, adoption. Most people don't really understandnot just the random person on the street, but even the cyber experts. They don’t understand that the trust but verify model is broken, has been broken and will forever forward be broken. When a model is forever more broken, you need to go to a new model. It's just how long does it take to get to that new model? a nd that's the authenticate and authenticate and keep authenticating and keep your trust to an absolute minimum. The Internet of things actually makes a whole bunch of things bad in this regard.

TB: What does that mean to you, Internet of things?

DE: The Internet of Things is the infrastructure that connects inanimate objects to the Internet.

When you think about that infrastructure, just like the Internet connecting computers, how do you connect inanimate objects? a nd when I think about the Internet of Things, I think of a barcode. That's part of the Internet of Things. It gets connected to the Internet briefly when it gets scanned. a nd all that information goes through the network and the network does whatever it wants with it. Same thing with the pure passive r FID.

We've been doing this for decades. For example, I've had the privilege of taking a tour of the GM factory in a ddison, Texas. They manufacture chevy Products, GM products, and c adillac products, basically the big SUVs, on the assembly line in that plant. a s the various products are moving through, if it's a chevy, it gets certain parts. If it's a GM c , it gets other parts. If it's a c adillac, it gets different parts. They're all on the same line sneaking through the manufacturing assembly plant.

The parts bins are all barcoded. We were looking at how we could automate using r FID so we could improve the efficiencies of manufacturing, make sure everything got to the right place and triple verify that the right part is in the right bin. They're scanning barcodes to make sure that they've got the right part. When they scan it out of the bin they'll scan the barcode on the bin, pull it out, put it on the car.

TB: That assumes that the inventory was stocked appropriately into the bin, right?

DE: correct. a nd occasionally because you get a lot of colors that look very much the same, and you might have a red for the chevy and a red for the c adillac that look basically the same under fluorescent lighting and they are basically the same part because there's a lot of shared parts - no secrets there - it gets stocked into the chevy part location instead of the c adillac location. Then they put it under the bright lights and do their final check, and finally can tell that it's the wrong red. Now they’ve got to pull it off and replace the whole bumper. This is where having r FID technology integrated into the parts can help to eliminate or further minimize those types of errors. They are all too common, given some of the similarities in the colors and the parts. Those types of errors are extremely expensive when they're identified late in the game.

Lear, one of the seat manufacturers that is effectively co-located with chevy, actually uses r FID in the platform that they use on their assembly line to build their seats, and that r FID tag will be read at every station. Information about that seat will come up for the operator for what they need to put on at each station. This moves very smoothly and reduces cost and decreases the time to assemble a seat in those cases.

TB: What is your view on Industrial IoT?

DE: Industrial IoT is just the IoT applied in industrial manufacturing or warehouse or other type of retail or home setting.

When you think about IoT, the extreme low end of IoT is barcode and pure passive rFID tags. however you also have rFID tags that have sensors in them. These could be cold chain sensors logging temperature or vibration sensors. That's the next level up. Then you can start talking about active technologies. home automation is just IoT everywhere. Your car, your smart cars and your IoT device. But really once you start moving up from this low end, the more costly. The question is, what are the applications that you have on top of that? So you've got the networking, you've got the communication, you've got basic identity.

You can also bring in more functionality to that edge device. So, a smart thermostat, like a Nest thermostat, for example, is often considered to be an IoT device because it is connected to the network. It's connected through Wi-Fi to the Google cloud, where it mixes with all the other nest thermostats and Google mindset information. It becomes a much more efficient, much better thermostat to regulate the temperature in your home the way that you like it. It's an IoT device with localized functionality supported by cloud functionality.

TB: a nd gamification so you can earn “leaves.”

DE: Exactly. Google gets even more data and that is the other aspect of IoT. IoT is the foundation. It's just the network infrastructure, connecting your inanimate