Recently, I blogged about my interest in leveraging five major converging technologies (Identity, Internet of Things, Mobile, Social and Cloud) to transform my Yellow Jeep into a rolling laboratory, enabling me to experiment with and demonstrate how these important trends can enrich our lives.

This diagram will provide a framework for exploring my ideas:

The three big areas of exploration:

Instrumenting the Yellow Jeep – What sensors, actuators and control systems can be installed in the Yellow Jeep to monitor the vehicle, provide real time and historical data about its journeys and provide appropriate interaction with the driver and passengers?

Cloud functionality – What functions should exist in the cloud to receive and store data from the Yellow Jeep, provide appropriate supervisory control mechanisms and data analytics, and support user interface applications?

User Interface – What can users see and do via mobile or web applications to trace, interact with and analyze the Yellow Jeep and those who travel with me?

In the next few days, I’ll blog about my ideas in each of these areas.  If any of you would like to share your ideas, please let me know!

Roll on Yellow Jeep Journey!

 

I recently launched a personal web site and blog, Yellow Jeep Journey,  to provide a personal canvas where I can document my efforts to reach an aggressive weight loss goal, and more importantly, share my experiences in finding personal freedom, light, power and joy along the way.

But the Yellow Jeep Journey and Discovering Identity blogs are now coming together in an exciting way.  I am exploring how to more effectively integrate my professional pursuits into my quest for personal improvement.  I will cross-post my ideas about this pursuit on both blogs. I hope to garner the insight and support of my professional colleagues and associates as I move forward on this exciting endeavor.

So, here we go …

If you were to take the journey of your lifetime in a Yellow Jeep, how would you customize the Jeep for the journey?  Tires? Lift? Engine? Lights?  Yep – an integral part of the Jeep Mystique is modifying your own vehicle to suite your individual taste.

However, crazy engineer that I am, I have been thinking deeply about equipping my Yellow Jeep in a different way.  Of course, the tires and lift will be there, but I can envision more.  Suppose I could make my Yellow Jeep into a rolling laboratory of sorts, to test, play with and demonstrate the convergence of some of the most important technology trends in the world today? 

I have been heavily involved for the last decade in Identity and Access Management technology.  It has been a great ride, but I want to explore how to apply that technology in new and different ways.  Our world is experiencing great growth and innovation in the areas of cloud computing, mobile technology, social media and the most exciting to me – the Internet of Things. What if my Yellow Jeep could go beyond the traditional Jeep configuration and be equipped with the latest computing equipment and electronics that leverage and even break new ground in these converging forces?

Over the next several weeks, I will use this blog to record and refine my thoughts about how to leverage these technology trends to make my Yellow Jeep a powerful and exciting example of how these trends can all be leveraged together to enrich and enlighten our lives like never before.

Hope you will come along for the ride!

Roll on Yellow Jeep Journey!

Fifty two years ago yesterday, I was sitting in my aunt’s house in Salt Lake City, UT, while John Glenn was orbiting the earth in the Friendship 7 Mercury space capsule. What an exciting, pivotal accomplishment in the history of US space travel!  Thanks to NASA for providing the photo and nostalgic reminder.

The NASA photo of the day shows Neil Armstrong with an X-15 rocket-powered airplane he test-piloted in the early 1960’s, when I was a space-loving little boy.

NASA announced today that the Hugh L. Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, CA, has renamed the Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center.

In the flurry of news surrounding Google’s acquisition of Nest on Monday, I was particularly intrigued by the following graph from Business Insider   Specifically, the combination of 8 billion Internet of Things devices and 6 billion mobile devices (smart phones and tablets) projected for 2018 gave me pause.

I believe the real value of these expanding markets comes from the combination of the IoT and Mobile segments.  IoT technology progressively enables us to instrument and automate many areas in our daily lives; Tablets and Smartphones provide our primary windows into that instrumented and automated world.  The possibilities are limitless.

Kuppinger Cole just released an insightful Advisory Note: “Information Security Predictions and Recommendations 2014.”  The introduction stated:

Information Security is in constant flux. With the changing threat landscape, as well as a steary stream of new innovations, demand for Information Security solutions is both growing and re-focusing.

I like both the predictions and recommendations in this report.  Here are a few excerpts from my favorite recommendations:

Cloud IAM (Identity and Access Management)

Define an IAM strategy for dealing with all types of users, devices, and deployment models that integrates new Cloud IAM solutions and existing on-premise IAM seamlessly.

API Economy

Before entering this brave, new world of the API “Economy”, define your security concept first and invest in API Security solutions. Security can’t be an afterthought in this critical area.

IoEE (Internet of Everything and Everyone)

Before starting with IoEE, start with IoEE security. IoEE requires new security concepts, beyond traditional and limited approaches.

Ubiquitous Encryption

Encryption only helps when it is done consistently, without leaving severe gaps.

The whole paper is well worth reading.  Hopefully, this post whetted your appetite a little bit.

What is the most accurate acronym? I had just about made up my mind that I preferred Cisco’s IoE – the “Internet of Everything” more than the more universal IoT – the “Internet of Things.”

Then yesterday, I learned of two new acronyms: IoY and IoEE.

I read a short Popular Science article which referred to a “wearable network of gadgets, an Internet of You.”  I like that emphasis – of a person closely integrated with a broad array of sensors and gadgets.

Then I read a paper by Martin Kuppinger, where he referred to the “IoEE (Internet of Everything and Everyone).”

The IoEE – sometimes also referred to as IoT (Internet of Things) – is about connecting users and devices of all kinds.

I like that emphasis even more – recognizing that it is the integration of things and people that most effectively describes this rapidly emerging new wave of technology.  It isn’t just the explosive proliferation of connected sensors and actuators that matters.  It is the convergence of connected things, mobile technology, social networks, big data and people to provide innovative ways to enhance our lives.

So, which acronym should I use?  IoT seems to be winning in the popular vernacular.  But on a purely descriptive basis, I think IoEE is best.  It will be interesting to see which term comes out ahead.

Yesterday, I participated in an interesting discussion about the tension between a desire to keep data around for an extended period of time versus purging it quickly. On one hand, some people wanted to keep old email accounts active for an extended period of time, just in case an old email message might be needed. On the other hand, the IT folks wanted to quickly purge old information that might not be needed to meet specific legal requirements.

It reminded me of an experience early in my married life.  I had been out of college for a few years, but still kept a number of old text books in my office at work. Ever the packrat, I thought that surely these old books would be of some good use to me in the future. However, running out of space in my office, I brought a stack of the books home.   

I took the books out of my car and temporarily stacked them in the garage while I considered where to keep them.  After a few days, in keeping with her best de-junker instincts, my wife assumed I had planned to get rid of them, and donated the whole pile to a thrift store whose truck came through the neighborhood.

I was a bit miffed when I found out what happened, but my wife gently reminded me that I would probably never miss the books.  You know what?  She was absolutely right.  I never once missed the books, and life was a bit simpler because I didn’t have to store that unneeded stuff.

In the years since then, my packrat tendencies are nicely balanced by Claudia’s de-junking mentality.  She still has to remind me from time to time that I keep too much stuff around.  But she humors me by letting me maintain my little personal “museum” of old stuff. And every once in a while, I put some bit of that old hoarded stuff to good use.

The moral of this story?  I’m not sure.  But it was a nice memory.

 

Today, I read of at three separate instances where class-action lawsuits have been filed on behalf of people whose personal information had been breached at a healthcare company.  The largest lawsuit, filed against TRICARE, represents 4.9 million affected individuals and is seeking damages of $1,000 per record – a total of $4.9 BILLION. Wow!

This action or other similar lawsuits have yet to be reach court or settlement. Depending on the outcomes, potential costs of litigation and resulting awards to victims may emerge as the single most powerful financial driver to implement good information security in the healthcare industry. 

From the NASA Picture of the Day service:

Taking Flight at Cape Canaveral The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft launches from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 41, Monday, Nov. 18, 2013, Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA’s Mars-bound spacecraft, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, or MAVEN, is the first spacecraft devoted to exploring and understanding the Martian upper atmosphere.

I love this photo!