A pending report on public safety and the IoT is focusing on FirstNet, said Barry Fraser, chairman of the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council's IoT working group at NPSTC's meeting Thursday. “We’re monitoring FirstNet’s rollout, of course, but also looking at what Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile may be doing as well in this area.” Michael Britt, chairman of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Robotics Working Group, said the working group recently was briefed by AT&T and is working on a report on the public safety use of aerial platforms, including cells on wings. NPSTC posted an initial report by the group on public safety use of drones, Britt said.

Sure Universal’s client software was certified by Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) and licensed for interoperability testing of hardware and software products seeking OCF certification, it said Monday. Some appliance manufacturers are expected to announce OCF support in products later this year, said Sure, which is working with appliance makers on implementation of the OCF protocol, and some 100 more are due to announce support in 2018. Sure's technology includes universal remote control, cloud server for data and communications, IoT gateway software and smart appliance software, it said. The latest version of Sure’s universal remote app for Android includes Amazon Alexa integration, and future versions also will support Google Voice and Apple Siri, the company said. The open-source OCF standard is designed to ensure IoT products work together seamlessly regardless of brand. Sure’s app, in combination with the OCF standard, supports any wireless protocol in common use, it said, including Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and with an infrared blaster, it can control more than a million IR appliances, it said. Kimberly Lewis, OCF marketing work group chair, gave a use case example built around Sure’s Universal software solution for a business traveler arriving at her hotel. She checks in via a smartphone app, unlocks the door and controls the room environment from the app, including turning on lights, closing shades, turning on the TV and setting the alarm. Even if different manufacturers made all the devices, Sure Universal software with OCF support can control those devices from one location on a smartphone, Lewis said.

Only 10 percent of U.S. consumers with smart home devices use a personal assistant device or app to control their smart home, said a Parks Associates report Thursday. With the infrastructure for the consumer IoT in place for networked products that connect to the cloud, “companies now need to identify and deploy the best strategies and innovations to engage consumers in the IoT,” said Parks analyst Brad Russell. Additional findings, said Parks: Between 40 and 50 percent of consumers are willing to share data if presented with a variety of nonmonetary incentives and roughly 1.5 million consumers subscribe to a Wi-Fi-first mobile service.

Alexa integration is among the enhancements Ayla Networks added to its IoT platform to spur consumer adoption of connected products, said the company in a Monday announcement. Manufacturers can implement Alexa skills on their connected products via the Ayla IoT platform without writing code or running servers on Amazon Web Services, it said. The Ayla Insights 2.0 upgrade also includes integrations with mnubo for IoT machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide operations monitoring, predictive maintenance and product usage analytics, said Ayla. Proactive support can reduce service and maintenance costs by giving manufacturers more visibility over their installed Ayla-connected products in real time, it said. Other updates include a mobile data streaming service that provides automatic updates for consumer IoT mobile apps from the Ayla cloud with no manufacturer or consumer action required; multifactor authentication for an extra security layer; and support for WeChat users in China.

Samsung began mass production of its first Exynos-branded IoT solution, the Exynos i T200 processor, it announced Thursday. The chip is built on a low-power 28-nanometer High-K Metal Gate process and includes 802.11b/g/n single-band Wi-Fi connectivity, said the company. It has Wi-Fi Alliance and Microsoft Azure certification and natively supports the IoTivity protocol from the Open Connectivity Foundation, Samsung said. For security and privacy, the i T200 uses a separate security management hardware block and secure data storage and device authentication management that doesn’t require a key to be fused on silicon, it said. The design is said to provide a higher level of security compared with conventional one-time programmable-based solutions.

Comments to NTIA about improving industry ability to deal with botnets and other automated and distributed threats (see 1706090008) were extended to July 28, said the Department of Commerce in a notice slated to appear in Thursday's Federal Register.

The Zigbee Alliance released the Pro 2017 network specification, calling it the first mesh network capable of operating in two ISM (industrial, scientific and medical) bands: the sub-GHz 800-900 MHz band for regional requirements and the 2.4 GHz for global acceptance, said a Wednesday announcement. The dual-band option gives manufacturers design choice and offers flexibility for municipalities and consumers to connect products across homes, buildings and cities, it said. By adopting Pro 2017, manufacturers can build devices that use one network operating on multiple bands to address challenges of surrounding physical environments with the advantages of extended range, lower power consumption and reduced operating costs said the alliance. Sub-GHz capabilities support IoT networks for use cases including smart outdoor lighting, retail and data centers. Devices based on the Pro 2017 specification are part of engineering projects in Europe today, including in the U.K., which has a government mandate to roll out smart meters to approximately 30 million homes by 2020.

American consumer concerns about identity theft, bank card fraud, hacking, viruses and online transactions have grown considerably in the past three years, found a Unisys survey of more than 13,000 consumers in 13 countries released Tuesday. The only issue far more concerning to Americans is national security as it relates to war or terrorism, said the survey -- which dates to 2007 and is the first conducted since 2014. Bill Searcy, Unisys vice president-global justice, law enforcement and border security, said at a news conference that the rising numbers show people "feel they have a lack of control," given terrorism and cybercrime stories in the news. ID theft, he said, is another major problem, citing the 2015 Office of Personnel Management breach (see 1507090049) and other attacks. "Those of us who really don't understand computer systems are just that much more vulnerable, so I think that's why there's some concern," he said. Frank Cilluffo, who directs George Washington University's Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, said physical and cyber threats are converging "a lot quicker" than decision-makers and communities can understand. He said the threat spectrum is "vast and diverse" along with the growing interconnected IoT devices that presents a bigger attack landscape. "If there were a clarion call right now, it's that we need to start baking security into the design of our very infrastructures," he said. National Institute of Standards and Technology fellow Ron Ross said the complexity of internet and computer systems is growing, which also is a security threat. "We have to build an infrastructure that is leaner and meaner" and trusted, he said. He said the White House's cybersecurity executive order (see 1705110058) along with NIST publications like the Cybersecurity Framework can help.

Manufacturers should give consumers "clear information about whether, how, for how long, and at what cost their IoT devices will receive security support," the FTC commented on NTIA's multistakeholder initiative on security patching for such devices (see 1610190051). A Monday news release said commissioner voted 2-0 to file the comment in response to an NTIA working group draft document outlining how companies can better inform consumers about IoT security updates. The FTC said companies should, before selling an IoT device: say whether the device can receive security updates, how it receives those updates and when security support will end. On the last point, the commission said manufacturers should provide "a minimum security support period," for "clear, concrete information" compared with an "anticipated timeline" that could be misconstrued as a guarantee. The commission said manufacturers should give a date for starting and ending support. Plus, companies should disclose "key use limitations" before consumers buy a "smart" device so they know it will stop working or become vulnerable when security support ends, said the FTC. It recommended companies adopt a uniform security notification method and give consumers a way to sign up for real-time notifications. The commission said the working group shouldn't require manufacturers to explain how they evaluate, verify or test updates to consumers because those elements may impose "significant communication costs" to industry while providing little to no consumer benefit.

The number of records stolen via data breaches in 2016 globally rose nearly 54 percent compared with the prior year, said India-based technology company Wipro, which released its first cybersecurity report Thursday. The report was based on interviews with chief information security officer teams in 139 organizations across various sectors and in 11 countries in Asia, Europe, Middle East and North America. In a news release on the report, Wipro said user credentials were stolen in 56 percent of the breaches, meaning more damage could be perpetrated. It said 56 percent of all malware attacks last year were a result of Trojans, viruses accounted for 19 percent, and worms were 20 percent. It said IoT devices with low memory and processing footprint have "very little security capabilities" such as patching and are "easy prey" for hackers.