Connected World Archives - The Connected World

Even Prisons Can Be Hacked Now

Here is a somewhat disturbing but not surprising story about hacking vulnerabilities of modern prisons. It turns out some prisons use the same technology that was recently hacked in Iran. The same PLC’s used in Iran’s nuclear centrifuges are also used to control locks of cell doors. These PLC’s were hacked by the Stuxnet worm.

Again, it shouldn’t be all that surprising anymore as anything that is computerized is hackable and anything that is connected to the Internet even more so. Pair that fact with the fact that more and more things are computerized and even more connected and there you go. We are truly living in a connected, technology driven world. What will be hacked next, your car, your toaster? Don’t laugh. I fully expect hollywood to use this latest news to come up with a great prison break movie based on a hacked prison door.

This is one of the primary reasons that I draw my personal line at implantable tech. I’m not at all interested in putting tech into my body with the one exception of anything that can help with my diabetes. Other than that, I am not looking forward to the day when someone tries to hack my brain.

Data is King in the Connected World

I love my Amazon Kindle and so do a lot of other people. Amazon just announced for their top 10 books, Kindle versions are outselling print editions by more than 2 to 1. One of the reasons I love the Kindle so much turns out to be one of the best business decisions Amazon has made; Kindle software is available on a variety of platforms, including iPhones, Android phones, iPads, PC’s and Macs. Amazon has not forgotten they are first and foremost a reseller of books, and they have all the bases covered. Best yet, though, is the Kindle software keeps your books and most importantly your place in those books in sync across all your devices. Start reading a book on your Kindle and pick right up on your iPhone.

The key point here is that we are not only living in a Connected World but a device world. The world is littered with millions of devices of all kinds and more people are finding themselves with more than one. When you have multiple devices, the critical factor becomes keeping your data in sync with all of them. The Kindle happens to be one of the best examples of keeping data and state beautifully in sync. We are going to need to see this more with the other applications we use regularly.

This is why we are seeing such a push toward using the cloud, a fancy term meaning the Internet, for these kinds of services. When applications run on the Net, it’s much easier to maintain state and data across devices. Google’s Gmail is another great example of this. You can easily connect to and maintain all the read statuses wether you’re using an iPad or an Android phone.

In the Connected World it’s just as important to be connected to your data as with other people.