IBM Interconnect 2017 Conference
Lab 2334 – Watson IoT Platform Risk and Security Management
Abstract
This lab will explore the new Risk and Security Management capability in Watson Internet of Things platform. You will get hands on experience on connecting devices, configuring client and server certificates, managing connection policies and tracking compliance to the configured security policies. You will also review the Risk and Security Management user experience and provide your feedback on the usability of the design.
IoT Security Heartbeat iPad Application demonstrates how existing IBM products in the IoT and Security portfolios are providing better insights and responses to security threats using a Operational Dashboard
In 2017 I delivered the design for an IoT Security Heartbeat iPad Application demonstrating how existing IBM products in the IoT and Security portfolios are providing better insights and responses to security threats.
IoT Security Heartbeat Scenario
The IoT Security Heartbeat demo is designed around a business case scenario
Business Context
ACME Inc is a company producing multiple product lines of IoT white goods devices to two kinds of customer.
Unmanaged: Sell product for B2C with limited support. Firmware upgrades provided
Managed: Sell products B2B. Monitored, managed and upgradeable over the network. Compliance level SLA.
Personas
The CISO, or CSO, is directly responsible for risk, compliance, securing and protecting the assets of the business—including employees, data, IT infrastructure and information, plants and customers B2C and B2B managed and unmanaged IoT devices
Operational Dashboard and Security KPIs
CISO views the Operational Dashboard to confirm the IoT security state
High-level domains description:
Overall Enterprise Security
Connected Plant
Customer Endpoints
Business Alerts
Intelligence
Risk Forecast
Examples of Overall Enterprise Security KPIs
Endpoints Security Score – Fixed and Mobile devices
Application Endpoints Security Score
External Service Security Score
Identity Management
Network Connectivity
Geographies Alert Level
Governance Maturity Score
The Geographies Alert Level is Low based on current state of threats from IBM X Force Exchange
Scene 1 – Production plant IoT security issue
There has been a fire that caused damage to the manufacturing facility at Globex Inc. The fire centered around an exit door. Upon further investigation, it was clear that the source of the fire was an electric motor used to automate the security shutters on the door. Fortunately, nobody was harmed and the fire was contained, but the consequences could have been grave.
There are serious safety concerns in relation to risk to human life, as well as the potential negative impact to the reputation of, Globex Inc;, the manufacturing facility and the reputation of the brand for Oscorp Inc, the OEM company, supplying the faulty electric motor.
The Intelligence domain and Current News KPI becomes Amber indicating a warning on security risks with Supplier Risks Alarm on Oscorp Inc
Scene 2 – FW Version Update Status
The Intelligence domain and Suppliers Software Updates KPI becomes Amber indicating a warning that some of our devices needs to be updated (FW).
Devices need to be updated because we have a new firmware available from the OEM
Our current understanding of the FW update content upgrade => NOT CRITICAL
Upgrade postpone until next standard planned maintenance
Scene 3 – High level of Attacks/Threats on our Oscorp devices
The Connected Plant domain and Incident Management / Attempts KPI exceeds its threshold and becomes Red (Alert) because we are facing massive attack tentative on Oscorp Inc devices.
The debugging code left in the device opened up a security hole allowing the possibility of remote commands to be sent to the device outside of safe operating ranges. The IP addresses had been detected in relation to unauthorized access to other critical computing resources. In some instances devices were ‘cloned’ and malicious connections were attempted from those cloned devices to skew IoT data readings.
Scene 4 – Business Impact Alert on Production
The Business Impact domain and Incident in Production Floor becomes amber because of current attacks on Oscorp. Devices may have a huge impact on our production planning.
Scene 5 Watson Alert / Prescription / Recommended Actions
Watson raises an alert with Production at Risk, Compromised security and High level Physical Safety issue.
Prescription: Upgrade as soon as possible Oscorp Inc. devices with last Firmware update
Show how to enforce near real-time Firmware Upgrade
Show how to “isolate” those devices
Show how to plan countermeasures
Start a business process/workflow
Options are provided for resolving the risk with a Security optimised route, or a Cost Optimised route.
ACME is choosing the Cost Optimisation route and schedules device FW updates based on a need scheduled update cycle. It minimises the impact win business and any demands for production downtime. By choosing this route, relevant people in the ACME organization are notified of the conditions and plan.
Scene 6 – Intelligence and Sentiments Analysis on Social Media
The Operational Dashboard provides intelligence and insights into customer satisfaction related to product security. ACME provides B2C smart products to end consumers and managed products under SLAs for B2B clients.
The Intelligence domain and News Awareness becomes amber because clients satisfaction is dropping and Sentiment Analysis in Social Media is indicating product, security or vulnerability issues. These early indicators may not yet show in corporate support channels.
Scene 7 – Business Alerts
The Business Alerts and Variation in Client Support Requests becomes amber because because the increase in client support requests on product malfunctions. This is impacting the ACME operational cost but also indicating a risk to client operations.
Scene 8 – Customer Endpoints The Customer Endpoints and Policy Compliance Score becomes amber because the Enterprise Assets KPI is dropping. Drilling into the data source of Device Security Policies in the Watson IoT Platform we see that a significant number of devices are failing to authenticate. This suggests that there is an issue.
Scene 8 Watson Alert / Prescription / Recommended Actions
Watson issues an Alert on the condition.
To the left, notifications on Compliance, Customer, and Social Media KPIs. To the right, prescriptions from Watson on the root cause and suggestions on further actions
This concludes the IoT Security Heartbeat demo.
“Ninety-four percent of CxOs believe it is probable their companies will experience a significant cybersecurity incident in the next two years.”
“An effective tactic to combat cybercrime is transparency and collaboration, sharing incident information internally and externally. Improve awareness and drive a more risk-aware culture across the entire organization.”
“The trust on comfort on cybersecurity strategy of their enterprise is well established is widely different. 76% of The trust on comfort on cybersecurity strategy of their enterprise is well established is widely different. 76% of the CIO’s agree – 51% of CEO’s agree .”
Personas is a design tool to set focus and ensure the empathy of the user. It helps us deepen our understanding of the users of the IoT Platform and their usage of the platform capabilities outlined above. It ensures that the design objectives are focused on the person behind the problem.
Don’t confuse personas with roles. Personas are not Roles. A role is mostly a specific declaration of responsibility. A role description often includes
Tasks – The tasks the role performs
Workflows – The workflows the role is responsible to perform
Collaborators – The collaborators that interact in or depend on the tasks or workflows
Artifacts – The information items that are worked on or produced by the role in tasks or workflows
Outcome – The artifacts produced and the state of the artifacts
Personas are fictional archetypes of users created to represent the different stakeholders a solution. It empathizes by understanding and capturing their business and personal contexts.
Personas bring together the tasks, pains, needs, and priorities for key users.
Personas describe all the attributes that affect someone’s day.
Personas are based on user research from e.g. surveys, user interviews, focus groups, and customer support calls
Read more about Personas and how I develop personas below and in the Design Thinking section of the portfolio.
IoT Personas
When joining the IoT Platform team in 2015 I started to research and generalize the IoT personas. The objective is to get a code set of personas for IoT, extended for the platform and other solutions.
Personas is a living design document, continuously updated by research and validated by our clients and sponsor users. I find in our continuous research that the IoT personas are well representing the variability across industries and organizations adopting IoT and transforming their business.
The Personas for the IoT platform are focused on the fictitious ACME corporation, an enterprise-sized organization that is transforming its business to IoT by exploring, adapting, and running an IoT operation. The LOB organization depends on corporate IT services, has IoT operational teams, LOB analytics teams, and service teams dedicated to client operations. See the image below.
Bob is a Line of Business Manager leading a business of existing and new products. He wants to understand how to leverage the data and connectivity of devices to create new streams of revenue. He will discover industry content on IBM.com and act on solution proposals from Archie. Bob is providing funding for IoT business application development.
Archie is a Solution Architect that proposes, proves, and deploys the IoT Foundation platform to the LOB. He decides on integration strategies and architectures for the new IoTF platform, existing business systems, and devices in production.
Oscar is a DevOps Manager that configures and operates the IoT Foundation platform, Bluemix services, and supporting IT services for LOB operations and development.
Chris is an Application Developer that works in the LOB, in IT, or with a 3rd party. He develops IoT industry applications for the LOB. He uses DevOps capabilities to develop, deploy and fix applications that integrate IoT Foundation device data and Bluemix services.
Dave is a Chip Engineer that develops silicon devices and sensors. He delivers chips, devices, and boards for industry and consumer products. Dave may work at an OEM that delivers chips to devices that ACME integrates into its products.
Devon is a Device Developer that integrates HW and SW into devices and appliances. He develops and maintains device firmware that securely connects devices to IoT Foundation. Devon may work at an OEM that delivers devices that ACME integrates into its products.
Ravi is a Systems Engineer with the chip provider integration partner, works with Devon to integrate chips and sensors into the product line.
Sally is a LOB System Operator. She handles the day-to-day system operations on customer IoTF organizations by onboarding new users and making sure that new device types and devices are registered, are behaving, and are up to date with recent secure firmware.
Adam is a LOB Security Analyst. He ensures security by proactively creating rules that detect threats and prevent breaches. He creates automation that acts on misbehaving devices and users. And he ensures compliance through audits.
Ryan is a LOB Data Scientist. He knows all about the industry data delivered from devices and the algorithms that provide meaningful analytics. He implements advanced algorithms as services to be used by the LOB analysts and LOB industry applications.
Marcia is a LOB Operations Analyst. She is responsible for the availability of specific assets in the LOB product line and uses deeper analytics provided by Analytics in the IoT Foundation platform and Ryan’s algorithmic service extensions.
Lester is a Service Delivery Manager responsible for an SLA with a client to the LOB. He, and his team of maintenance engineers, are on or near the client site and manage equipment and use the IoT Foundation platform and LOB industry applications to monitoring, plan, and service equipment.
The ACME IoT teams get set up or engaged at various phases in the adoption of the IoT platform and the provisioning of IoT services to the clients of the LOB.
Lifecycle scenario view of the IoT personas covering Discover > Getting started > Everyday use > Manage and upgrade.
Bob and Archie discover, play, and try IoT. Designs have been explored and delivered for ‘Try and Buy’ scenarios.
Oscar getting started and maintaining the IoT platform. The design has been explored and delivered for ‘Getting started’ scenarios including IoT platform configuration settings of integrated services and on-boarding of new users.
Sally for running day-to-day operations on registered and connected devices.
Lester getting providing services to his clients based on the IoT platform, connected devices, and instrumented assets.
For each persona, we describe the Role, the Motivation, and the Pain-points. The following sections call out some of the research outcomes on the key IoT personas
Sally the System Operator
Sally is one of the most frequently used personas in the design across the platform capabilities. Our initial research in 2015 focused on the ‘Getting started’ and ‘Everyday use’ scenarios covering the steps for Sally to in getting access to the platform, configure the IoT platform for the LOB on-board the LOB IoT team, supporting the everyday scenario of boot-strapping a service delivery team delivering an IoT project at a client site.
Device management of connected devices in high quantities.
Wants to be able to quickly identify problematic devices and take appropriate action as soon as possible, without needing to consult the documentation
Also wants to perform, and monitor progress, of management actions (such as rebooting and updating) on devices centrally, without needing physical access to devices
Add organizations, users, devices, data, and access
Add devices
Update firmware
Monitor device errors
Monitor system behavior
Sally’s motivations
Getting things done efficiently, is only a part of her job
Making sure things are running smoothly
Not get paged at the weekend
See status and act on issues
Monitor from the mobile device
Sally’s frustrations
Overworked, impatient, fed up with callouts, too busy watching stuff
Pressured by developers
Overwhelming dashboards
Flickers between multiple dashboards
1000’ds of devices
Not finding problem devices
Bricking devices in the wild
Too much complex technical documentation
New technologies and terminologies
Having to ask developers for help
Worried about hackers
Storyboard
The high-level steps in the initial ‘Getting started’ and ‘Everyday use’ scenarios
Sally is added to the platform by Oscar as a user with an Administrator role
Sally configures the roles and permissions required by the LOB
Sally on-boards the LOB team to the platform
Sally defines device types and registers devices. She confirms that devices are connecting and sending data events to the IoT platform.
Sally configures a dashboard with boards and cards to monitor device state and alerts
Sally configures users and access permissions for Lester’s service team
Other IoT personas
Bob the Line of Business Manager
Bob is a key persona discovering and leading the organization in leveraging IoT in the line of business
Bob understands where the market is heading and sets the product strategy within his business
Bob is creating new streams of revenue through IoT by managing a product line of new IoT innovations and instrumentation making existing products starter
Bob needs to understand how a new IoT product is being consumed by his users
Bob needs to know what data to measure and how analytics on the IoT data to gain the new insights
Archie the System Architect
Archie is a key persona in discovering, playing and trying the IoT platform.
Archie is responsible for deciding strategies on the technologies and architectures for the new IoT platform
Archie needs to present a proposal for transforming the existing business solutions into an IoT solution
Archie needs to present a proposal for extending the value of existing devices and data through analytics Archie needs to present a proposal for the right solution and make the right choices on system scale, security, cost, and operational efficiency for the team
Lester the Service Delivery Manager
Lester is a key persona in setting up and providing services to his clients based on the IoT platform, connected devices and instrumented assets. Lester is a part of the LOB and managing a team of engineers ensuring the delivery of an SLA to a client. He and his team is on- or near-site of the devices and equipment that are managed.
Lester has a team of Reliability Engineers
Lester is responsible for operations for the client services
Lester is manages the users, resources, and access for his team
Lester is responsible for proactively monitoring the state of equipment and plan service actions
Lester needs to operate his team efficiently. He knows that time is money when systems are down
Meet Sally the IoT System Operator.
Sally is one of the most frequently used operator personas in the design across the platform capabilities.
Also, meet Chris is the Application Developer and Devon is the Edge Device Developer.
Chris and Devon are the most frequently used personas in the developer experience design across the platform capabilities.
IoT Platform Developer Experience Design research on the developer experience in the Watson IoT Platform.
In 2016 I contributed to the design concepts for Access Control in the Watson IoT Platform.
What is Access Control
Operational security is key to the Watson IoT Platform and includes
Authentication is the process of verifying that a user is who he claims he is and belongs to the selected IoTP organization. This is your typical log in system.
Authorization is verifying that subjects, e.g. users, can only perform the actions that you want them to perform and no more.
Access Control extends authorization by allowing further restricting access to the resources an action is executed on. Access control also includes non-resource-related restrictions, for example temporal restrictions, spatial restrictions or conditional restrictions.
The Access control design must provide configuration and management of Roles which enable controls to be defined for Users, Applications and Gateways. Configuration of Role permissions grant or restrict the ability to perform particular platform operations
User Research
User research on Access Control is impacting security scenarios for the following IoT personas
Sally is a System Operator
View the permissions granted in a role
Create a new custom role and select permissions granted
Modify and remove a custom role
She needs to assign roles to Users, Applications and Devcies
She needs to revoke access for Users, Applications and Devices
Rob is a Maintenance Engineer.
He only has access / permissions to a set of assets in the scope of his task, or the scope of his regional organization.
His access may be checked against his and the device geo location.
He may be delegated permissions to additional assets and tasks, e.g. to perform an FW upgrade.
Chris is a Developer
He needs API Keys to the Watson IoT Platform and other services
He needs to develop and test in a IoT development / test environment and stage into a IoT production environment
He has full access in dev/test and limited access in production
Devon is a 3rd party developer
He needs API Keys to Watson IoT Platform and other services
He needs to develop and test in his 3rd party development environment, optionally integrated with the client staging environment
He has full access in dev/test and limited access in production
He depends on client APIs, docs and samples
He and his applications may be a leakage point for access keys and data and access may be revoked
Hills
Sally the system operator can
Authorize user permissions to resources using predefined roles
Authorize user permissions to resources using custom roles
Authorize user permissions to groups of resources using custom roles
Design Concepts
Terminology
The design concept defined the access control model
Subject. Anauthenticated entity that requests platform access and which needs to be authorized. Examples of subjects are Users, Applications, Devices and Gateways. Subjects may be grouped and such subjects groups are also subjects.
Action. The action that the subject wishes to perform. Most actions can be categorized as either View or Manage e.g Create, Read, Update, Delete or Execute. Operations are a further grouping of Actions on resource types covered by a given API. Permitted operations are grouped in a Role.
Resource. The object(s) that the subject wishes to perform the action against. Resources may be associated with a Group, or Tagged. Groups and tags are used to define a resource scope.
Permission. A permission is the selection of a role and a scope of resources that defined the permission of a subject. Subjects may be given multiple permissions.
Predefined Actions
The actions in the IoT Platform user interface and APIs, available to users, applications and devices, are grouped into sections. The sections are related to resource types and goupings of related actions. The groups are
Devices
Logs
Cache
Historian
Organization
Access Control
Gateways
Real Time Analytics
Connector
Risk Management
Actions under there categories are support by selecting View actions resources. Administrators can configure permissions to be
No access – by deselecting actions in a category
Real-only – by selecting View resource actions
Read and Write – by selecting by selecting View actions resource actions
Predefined User Roles
The Watson IoT Platform provides predefined Roles for users with a predefined set of Actions. These one of these roles may be selected for a user.
Administrator
As an Administrator I’m permitted to all user commands in the IoT Platform
Operator
As an Operator I can view and manage (create, modify, remove) devices, types, data, rules, users, roles and access.
I can not configure IoT Platform storage, authentication and mail configurations
Developer
As a Developer I can view and manage devices, types, data and rules.
I can not view or manage IoT Platform configurations or API keys
I can not manage users or access
Analyst
As an Analyst I can view and manage analytics (cloud and edge) rules, actions and alerts
I can view types, devices, events, data, users and roles
Reader
As a Reader I can view types, devices, events, data, rule alerts, users and roles
Predefined ApiKey Roles
The Watson IoT Platform provides predefined Roles for ApiKeys with a predefined set of Actions. These one of these roles may be selected for an API Key.
APP_Operator
Application for Administrators that replace or extend the IoT Platform web interface.
Can not configure IoT Platform storage, authentication and mail configurations
APP_BackendTrusted
Applications for device provisioning, device operations, data transformation and information management
Can view and manage devices, types and and rules. Can publish and subscribe to events and commands
APP_DataProcessor
Applications for reading and processing data, like Analytics
Can view and manage rules. Can view devices and types. Can subscribe to events and publish commands.
APP_Visualizer
Applications for presenting and visualizing data
Can view devices, types and alerts. Can subscribe to events
APP_Device
Device simulator
Default Device
Can publish events and subscribe to commands. Can subscribe and publish to DM topics.
NonTrusted_Gateway
In addition to above
Can view devices and device types.
Can can pub/sub to Device Management topics for itself and in behalf of locally connected devices.
FullyTrusted_Gateway
In addition to above
Can activate devices
Predefined and Custom Roles UX Design
Users with permissions to View roles and explore the predefined roles in the Users and Application sections in the IoT Platform. The axes of the presentation can be switched so that Roles are presented Horizontally or Vertically. Users can also filter the categories of actions to be shown.
Managing user roles in the Watson IoT Platform.
Custom roles can be created by Administrators, or other authorised users. A custom role selects the actions that a user or application may perform.
Creating a new role.
Meet Sally the IoT System Operator.
Sally is one of the most frequently used operator personas in the design across the platform capabilities.
We need to control access control and permissions for our internal organization, and for our 3rd parties that extend our IoT services. – Watson IoT Platform sponsor.
In 2016 I delivered design concepts and a UX design for Custom Device Management extensions in the Watson IoT platform.
What is Custom Device Management
Device Management in the Watson IoT Platform provides capabilities for Operators to perform actions on devices connected to the IoT platform. Basic device management actions include; Download Firmware, Update Firmware, Reboot and Factory Reset.
The device management requires a device management agent, implementing the device management protocol, to be running on devices. The agent is responsible for responding to IoT platform MQTT commands that initiates a device management action.
Custom Device Management extends the basic Device Management actions and enabled client organizations to define their specific actions and have any such actions available in the list of device management actions in the IoT platform user interface.
Device Management on Watson IoT Platform.
User research
In my research I found that
Device and Gateway partners implement a rich set of device management actions on gateways, in device management services, or in external cloud platform. Users’ needs to integrated this external set of actions and make them seamlessly available as delegated actions on devices in the Watson IoT platform.
Partners are delivering advanced device management for enterprise scale management of firmware. Client using such advanced device management services needs to make them seamlessly available, replacing any standard device management action for selected devices types.
Custom device management actions will specific to a set of device types. In a typical deployment multiple device management action sets will be required, for multiple independent device partners and service providers.
Custom device management actions will be downloaded as a device management extension package from a device partner product web page and installed on the IoT Platform.
Custom device management extension packages will be versioned. Multiple device management extension package versions can run on the platform, or be replaced with a new version.
Custom device management extension packages needs to be internationalized.
Custom Device Management Design
Design Concepts
The custom device management design is enabling
Extending the built-in capabilities for Device Management in WIoTP
A consistent user experience for all build-in and custom DM commands
Supporting delegation of device management 3rd party device, gateway and platform partners
Definition of a Custom Command Package to declare and upload commands to WIoTP
Support version and variant management of Custom Command Packages
Hills and Use-cases
As an Operator I need to configure, manage and run 3rd party custom Device Management actions on devices and gateways managed in the IoT Platform
As an Operator I need to configure an extension for 3rd party DM actions on a device type
As an Operator I need to select and run a DM action
As an Operator I need to update my 3rd party DM extension to stay in sync with new FW updates
UX Design
Install a 3rd party Device Management extension package
The System Operator will go to the 3rd party device provider web or log into the 3rd party cloud service. A device management extension package will be downloaded for a set of 3rd party device types. The System Operator will log into the IoT platform, choose Settings > Extensions and upload and enable the Device Management extension package.
Installing a 3rd party Device Management extension package.
Run a run a 3rd party Device Management action
The System Operator logs into the IoT platform. The operator has permissions to run DM actions and opens the Devices > Actions section. The operator chooses a 3rd part DM action, selects a device / gateway type, selects devices and provides optional information for the action. The operator runs the action and monitors the progress.
Running a run a 3rd party Device Management action.
Run a run a 3rd party Device Management action from a Device Type or Device
The System Operator may also run the 3rd part DM action directly on supported device types or devices.
Run a run a 3rd party Device Management action from a Device Type or Device.
Update a 3rd party Device Management extension package
Operators will, as part of a FW update, go to the 3rd party web and retrieve a new Device Management extension package with updated custom commands. The operator may choose to replace the existing package, or alternatively add a new package to maintain devices with different FW version
Updating a 3rd party Device Management extension package.
Read more about Custom Device Management Actions on the Watson IoT Platform blog.
Custom Commands Extension Package Designs
The UX design in the previous section shows how to use the IoT platform user interface to upload and use Custom Commands Extension Packages.
An extension package is JSON file with a structure defined by Watson IoT Platform
An extension package has
A name
A version
A description
A list of supported device types
A list of custom device management commands
A command has
A name
A description
A list of parameters (string types) w/ name, description, optionally a default value
A command specification containing the command string with parameter substitution identifiers
A sample extension package is provided in IoTP documentation
Related Designs
The custom command design has enabled related designs in 2016
Usage of custom device management commands in Firmware over the air (FoTA) integrations with business partners
With Custom Device Management we have full control integrating with the MQTT commands implemented in our IoT devices and gateways. – Watson IoT Platform partner.
Gateways is a specialized class of devices in Watson IoT Platform which serve as access points to the Watson IoT Platform for devices with limited IP communication capabilities, or platforms of platforms connecting to the Watson IoT Platform.
In 2015 I delivered design concepts and a user experience design for gateway support in the Watson IoT Platform.
What is a Gateway
An IoT Gateway is an intermediary network device between one or more devices, the internet, and the IoT platform.
Devices comes in many forms and purposes. Some are complex assets with rich capabilities and networking functions. Others have a less to none functions to connect directly to the internet and need an IoT Gateway to translate communication of a non-IP network to an MQTT connection with the IoT platform. In other cases a gateway may act as a bridge between an external IoT platform of devices and the Watson IoT Platform.
A gateway gets involved in the identification, connection and registration of devices, and transferring the data from the devcie to the IoT Platform over the internet if the device is not IP enabled, like a Bluetooth, ZigBee or LPWAN device.
Design Vision
The vision of the design for IoT Getaways is
A Gateway is a device. It can act as a device and a Gateway. Hence, unify the way types or devices and gateways are defined.
A Device is a device, regardless of its networking capabilities, connection protocol, or if its directly connected to the IoT platform, or connected though a gateway.
The design should unify the way devices and gateways are searched, listed and filtered in the IoT Platform UI.
Devices connecting though a gateway appears as any directly connected devcie in the IoT Platform user interface. The design should use device attributes and icons to visually distinguish devices and gateways in the IoT Platform UI.
The IoT Platform should simplify the provisioning of managed devices. IoT Gateways may be granted permissions to auto-register its managed devices.
The IoT platform should simplify device management for managed devices. IoT Gateway should transparently manage device management operations on its managed devices.
User Research
In my research I found three types of connection patterns between a gateway and its managed devices
Static. Devices are statically associated with one gateway.
Nomadic. Devices are associated with a gateway for a reasonable period of time. It then stops connecting to that gateway and at some later time it starts connecting to a different gateway and then uses that exclusively for a period. An option might be given to assign new metadata when it reconnects.
Mobile. A device that moves more rapidly between many different gateways. Metadata, like the associated gateway and location, is changed automatically.
Client report the Static type to be the dominant case, followed by the Nomadic case. The Mobile case is less frequent but may be a more prominent case as roaming volume devices become smarter and establish hotspot connections using local gateways.
Gateway Design Concepts
The IoT Gateway concept design
An IoT Gateway a new class of device in the APIs
A new MQTT message payload schema is defined for IoT Gateways
A consistent UX is design all devices, regardless if connected directly to the platform or managed by a gateway
A consistent browsing and filtering UX is designed for all devices in the existing single device list in the Devices > Browse section
Navigation is supported in the UX across a gateway and its managed devices
Navigation is supported in the UX from a managed device to its connected gateway
Enhancements to the data model and the device-management protocol
MQTT connectivity to support gateways
API changes to support gateways
Hills
IoT Gateways Hill 1 – Sally, a system operator, can connect a gateway to the IoTF to allow a range of (not so smart) devices to connect to the platform, be administered in the same way as other devices, and allow them to interact with other devices
Subhill 1 – Sally can set policies which allow a gateway to publish on behalf of devices associated with the gateway
Subhill 2 – Sally can be sure that each device has a unique identifier that ensure unique connectivity when moving or roaming through any available gateway
Subhill 3 – Sally can initiate device management actions against a gateway to be performed against it’s associated devices
Use-Cases
As an Operator I need to
Create a device type for a gateway and set policies
Register a gateway and attached devices
View, search and filter gateways
View, search and filter attached devices
Perform management actions on a type of devices connected through gateways
Perform device management actions on a gateway and its attached devices
As a Device Developer I need to
Find a IoT Recipe that provides docs, libraries and sample on developing a gateway
UX Design
Low resolution design mock-ups below as additions to the existing Devices UX design.
Create a device type for an IoT Gateway
As an Operator I need to
Create a new device type
Select a ‘Gateway’ role
Enter device properties
Enter gateway policies
Save the new device type
Creating a device type for an IoT Gateway
Register an IoT Gateway and attached devices
As an Operator I need to
Create a new device using a Gateway device type
Enter device identity properties
(Wait for the gateway to connect and publish attached devices)
Filter on new devices attached to a registered gateway
Register, or confirm registration, of attached devices
Registering an IoT Gateway with attached devices.
View, search and filter gateways and attached devices
As an Operator I need to
Open dashboard
View gateways
Filter on gateway type or id
View device information and perform actions
View devices
Add a Gateway column Filter on device type
View gateway information
Viewing, searching and filtering gateways and attached devices.
Perform management actions on a type of devices connected through gateways
As an Operator I need to
Open a view with gateways and devices
Select a management action from a list of available actions
Switch to the view to track running actions
Monitor progress on the actions
Performing management actions on a type of devices connected through gateways.
Final Production Design
Examples of UX design in the IoT Platform
Users can query for all devices with Class Id = Gateway. In this organisation we see 4 gateways are connected.
Opening one of the gateways in Munich we can see all devices that are connected though that gateway.
Opening a managed devcie we can see the gateway the devcie is connecting though.
Filter on gateway and the devcie type to see all motion sensors connecting though the Munich Yanzi gateway.
Another example using the Enocean gateway and its connected sensors
Looking at the details of one of the Enocean sensors we see the device events and data sent to the IoT Platform.
Final production design.
Performing management actions on a type of devices connected through gateways. [/su_panel]
In 2017 a new Devcie Table design is released. This new design will simplify the query / filter and user access to element information. In the screen below we are selecting all gateways by the Class ID = Gateway filter.
New production design for Devcie Tables in 2017.
Related Designs
The gateway design has enabled other related designs in 2016
Edge gateways – Edge analytics is based on edge gateways to connect edge devices and run delegated edge rules. The Edge Gateways are using the gateway design to manage gateway types and instances.
Platform of Platform – External cloud platforms are implementing the Gateway integration to register and connect devices in the external platform to the Watson IoT Platform. The external cloud platform is connected as a gateway and acting as a proxy by routing events and commend across the two platforms.
Trusted and untrusted gateways – Improvements and restrictions by by applying resource level access control and permissions to gateways limiting capabilities for auto-registration and the devices a gateway can act on behalf of.
Most of our gateways are statically deployed. They are today deployed in lamp posts and traffic lights. There are some case where the gateway is deployed into a bus connecting over GPRS. But not as a mobile case where mobile devices are roaming across multiple gateways. – Watson IoT Platform partner.
IBM Interconnect 2016 Conference Session IDA-5360
Playing back the Watson IoT Platform design
Abstract
The IBM Watson Internet of Things Platform delivers capabilities to create new value and new ways of working that brings together people, process and now things. In the first part of this session, we will introduce the IBM Design Thinking methodology and the platform personas and use cases explored in the IoT design. We will frame the discussion around our design objectives, also know as Hills, and play back the user experiences design using the IBM IoT Platformon Bluemix.
Designing the Configuration Management User Experience in CLM 6.0
Check out my blog on Jazz.net on how we used design thinking and release hills to expresses user value, objectives and the scope for the CLM 6.0 the release
We are nearing the release of Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM) 6.0 that will include Configuration Management (CfgM) across lifecycle projects, which we developed using IBM Design principles. One of these principles in our design thinking is the use of release hills to expresses user value, objectives and the scope of the release.
Our first hill for the 6.0 CfgM capabilities is to ensure that, ‘with minimal impact to current usage, team members can select a configuration related to their plan and be confident that they are using the right artefacts and links’. To meet this objective we designed a simple, usable and transparent user experience for practitioners to select, work and navigate in a configuration context.
Our second release hill is to ‘define configurations of a product under development consisting of requirements, tests, designs and implementation’. For this objective we designed configuration management administration in a new global configurations application.
Working with Artifacts and Links in a configuration context
User scenarios are a key part in our design process. In the scenarios for the first release hill we focus on how personas, like Susan a system engineer or Tony a tester, are using work item links to browse to artifacts in the right configuration context. For example, when following a link that Tony created in a defect, Susan would browse into the release baseline context to reproduce the defect. Or for change requests, Susan would browse into a development stream to update the linked artifacts. In both cases we pursued a design that simply switches the practitioner into the right configuration context.
In the CLM 6.0 release we designed a simple and transparent configuration selection and navigation mechanism for these scenarios. It’s based on the assumption that administrators or project leads will create ‘releases’ associated with project timeline iterations and global configurations in the work item system. Some ‘releases’ will represent immutable release baselines. Other releases will represent streams for new development.
As project leads, self configuring teams or practitioners start assigning work to plans. The ‘Planned For’ and ‘Found In’ fields in the work items will be set and associated to such a ‘release’. When a practitioner follows a link to the target artifact, the right configuration and artifact version will be opened. The configuration is also used when hovering over a link to get a preview of the link target artifact. With this design, teams can easily adopt new configuration management practices with very low impact to users.
An alternate use-case for selecting a configuration is to use the Configuration Management menu on the application banner. By clicking the ‘Switch’ button a practitioner can browse and select a new configuration context. This simple design provides a consistent experience across the CLM 6.0 tools for requirements, tests or design. The configuration context information on the application banner, found on the left side of the menu, gives practitioners a simple and accessible way to see and confirm the current configuration context. Also, the configuration management menu is designed to provide basic and advanced actions for managing configurations and change, including creating streams and baselines, managing changes by comparing configurations and delivering changes across configurations.
Managing Global Configurations in the new Global Configurations application
The scenarios and design for configuration leads and administrators has taken aim at a much richer configuration management user experience in the new Global Configurations application. Here administrators can create Global Configuration project areas that define global components with stream and baselines that provide consistent configuration management across requirements, tests, design and implementation. Global configurations also provide key capabilities to manage products, product variants and reuse. The design of the Global Configurations tool provides a hierarchal editor for global configurations with consistent new flat and clean icons and easy to find context actions which are also easy to use.
While the user experience is rich in configuration management administration capabilities, we also designed the tool to be easy to find and use for experienced practitioners that may need richer configuration management capabilities than provided by the tool configuration management menu. The design of the configuration management menu provides easy navigation directly to the Global Configuration editor for the current global configuration context by just clicking on the Global Configuration link in the menu. You can note this in the second image above this text.
The design of the Global Configurations tool provides great design consistency and usability. Project Area Configurations are picked and updated using consistent dialogs. The usability of the tool is improved through link navigation from the editor directly to the Project Area configuration in the context of the selected global configuration.
If you would like to see these new capabilities in action right away, you can give them a test run in the Jazz.net cloud trial area.
“Ninety-four percent of CxOs believe it is probable their companies will experience a significant cybersecurity incident in the next two years.”
IoT Platform Developer Experience
