IoT-Designs

In 2016 and 2017 I contributed to the design concepts and UX design for Information Management in the Watson IoT Platform.

What is Information Management

Watson IoT Platform Information Management provides an abstract model of identifiable assets that will allow IoT applications to be decoupled from the complexities of how specific devices are connected. Devices and logical composites often form a complex hierarchical relationship between maintainable assets & connected sensors and actuation devices. By providing a definition of a state, type schemas for data, abstract interfaces to state and behavior, and transformation of raw event data as part of the IoT Platform service the application layer benefits from decoupling of the instrumentation of the real-world and the management of the information model.

User Research

In our research, we observe that IoT solutions have

• Multiple devices and sensors instrumenting connected assets
• Devices integrated into an IoT solution come from an ecosystem of manufacturers
• The message format defined by devices is often unique to the device type. Limited data standardization on formats and units exists. 
• Devices form the complex hierarchical relationship between the assets and their sensors and actuation devices. 
• Device relations may be static by configuration, or dynamic by condition.
• Asset state depends on the conditional state of the related devices. 

An IoT solution developer needs access to an abstract model of identifying assets that will allow IoT applications to be decoupled from the complexities of how specific devices are connected.

Our research uncovers that organizations need to

• Improve productivity and speed of delivery on customer IoT deployment projects
• Bring down development cost due to impact from variability across device models and variants
• Reduce custom code required to create and manage Things on top of devices and their events and commands
• Reduce steps to configure and deploy a customer IoT system of devices

Organizations also need

• A simple programming model and an abstract interface model for devices and things to insulate from variability
• The platform to take the load off developers and relationships, behavior, state, history, simple transformations, complex enrichment, and access control into a consistent Things design
• A DEVOPS practice to run and manage the information model processing pipeline

Decomposing the needs for actions on data in the information management processing pipeline we find the following

• Parsing – Devices send data in various formats, like text, binary, encrypted formats. Binary formats are used to reduce transmission costs. Applications need data in JSON format.
• Normalize – Devices come in various models and versions. Each model uses its specific data format and schema. Applications need to interact with them all in the same way.
• Transform – Devices use various data units. For example, temperatures may be sent in Fahrenheit, Celsius, or Kelvin degrees. Applications need to interact using one defined unit.
• Filter – Only data that are relevant should be exposed. For example, only average data per hour may be required.
• Enrich – Device data may be combined with from some other external source. For example weather at the device location.
• Abstract – Devices operator in an event mode sending continuous data updates. My programming model may prefer a REST-based state model or a change based event-model.

Hills

Device Abstractions – Donna the information operator can manage the complexities of an IoT ecosystem while keeping the application insulated from data change

Aggregation into Things – Chris the developer can reference and work with manageable assets without being exposed to the individual instrumentation of them

In 2016 I contributed to the design concepts for Risk and Security Management in the Watson IoT Platform.

What is Risk Management

Businesses with IoT deployments have the challenge of ensuring that the entire IoT landscape operates within acceptable and expected boundaries. The consequences of IoT devices operating outside of defined criteria, or policies, could have a major impact on the security of the overall IoT deployment, the safe operation of connected devices, and business impact. The Watson IoT Platform allows the configuration of specific policies in relation to connection security, plus blacklist and whitelist options for IP addresses.  

The design objectives are to

• Provide assurance to clients of the security between device and cloud for data protection, authentication, authorization, and access control
• Establish a most trusted IoT platform with all the associated security and standards
• Reduce the risk and impact of IoT security incidents by enabling clients to efficiently and securely manage their IoT landscape

The design should

• Provide a security dashboard that visualizes the security status and provides easy access to device management and operations
• Provide security policy definition and management  to quickly spot security and critical issues
• Provide advanced device management and register devices for secure operations by defining and managing cryptographic key material
• Provide advanced data protection through Authentication, Authorization & Access Control

User research

User research on Risk and Security Management is indicating the importance in the following areas

• TLS authentication using certificates and/or tokens
• Most devices today have or have plans to support client certificates
• Many devices today support TLS authentication
• Managing and reporting on IoT risk and security compliance through policies
• Blacklists are considered the primary way to block device connections

Personas

User research on Risk and Security Management is impacting the following IoT personas

• Adam is an IoT Security Operator. He ensures security and compliance by specifying policies that detect abnormalities and prevents devices to be compromised. He reports to audits on compliance with regulations and policy coverage on devices.
• Sally is an IoT System Operator. She handles the day-to-day system operations on the LOB and client IoT organization. She makes sure that new device types and devices are registered, are behaving, and are up to date with recent secure firmware. She defines policies, creates and runs actions on policy alerts that act on misbehaving devices.
• Lester is a Service Delivery Manager. He is responsible for an SLA with an IoT 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.
• Rob is a Maintenance Engineer responsible for servicing managed assets in a site or region. He uses a mobile maintenance application to access assigned work orders, asset location, status, and history. He requests new firmware and configuration updates to resolve issues.

User research also concludes that organizations that are adopting IoT often combine system operations and security administration responsibilities into a single role. The organizational scope of system operations and security administration may vary. Global system operators like Sally may enforce common policies while service delivery leads like Lester may define exceptions for policies in the context of a specific deployment.