Cybersecurity education is on the agenda in Algeria, with efforts to push the discipline at the academic level. CyberSec is a group of private sector enterprises focusing on awareness-raising about the dangers of cybercrime to the economic prosperity of the country. Presided by Abdelaziz Derdouri, CyberSec has been actively organizing a number of events for SMBs in order to inform and educate on cybersecurity for the commercial sector. Most recently, the CyberSec group has turned its efforts to raising awareness among the younger generation. On October 23, 2013, CyberSec organized the first Regional Conference on Cyber Security together with the University El Hadj Lakhdar of Batna and the Al Bayan ICT Academy. More than 200 students attended and the group distributed over 2,000 awareness brochures.

At first sight, 6LoWPAN seems like a dreadful acronym, but once you actually say it aloud a few times it starts actually making some phonetic sense. That is good, because the chances are that we’ll be referring to it quite frequently in the future. It stands for “IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks” and the technology it refers to is meant to enable wirelessly connected sensors to send data to the web by using IP. The gist of this is that, without IPv6, there wouldn’t be enough IP addresses to go around for the IoT and, without the low-power capability, the sensors with their tiny batteries and processors couldn’t take advantage of the new addressing scheme. The ability to connect the sensors directly to the web is, in turn, a significant piece of the overall IoT puzzle for two main reasons. First, the web can streamline the implementation of cloud-powered IoT applications by minimizing the need for routing sensor traffic over smartphones and other gateway devices. And second, the openness of the web can strengthen the network effect around the IoT.

With the recent update to the Windows Phone platform that adds support for 6 inch screens, Nokia can now offer a phablet to consumers. ABI Research believes that this is a good thing for Nokia, who has been trying to help Microsoft establish itself as the third mobile ecosystem. Considering how difficult success in the smartphone market has become, not being able to make smartphones such as phablets only made it harder for Nokia to compete on equal footing with Android OEMs.

The pay TV market has been witnessing growing competition over the past few years, especially in markets with a higher pay TV penetration, which have experienced a slower growth in subscriber base. Market maturity, increasing competition from alternative online TV services and uncertain economic situations are among the factors contributing to the slow subscriber growth. Pay TV operators have been finding ways to maintain the subscriber growth. Recently, pay TV operators such as TrueVisions from Thailand, Comcast from the U.S. have announced prepaid TV services as one of the churn reducing strategies. Prepaid TV customers will need to buy a set-top box and the basic package upon subscription for the first time. At the end of initial subscription period which is normally one month, customers are can decide to continue or stop the service.

It was a contrasting summer for smart meter deployment news in Europe.

There is a lot of speculation among the pundits about NOK acquiring the ALU radio business.  That wouldn’t be a bad thing for NOK, as they would bulk up their scale with valuable footprint in the USA.  LTE is just beginning a good run with lots of future business.  It would also provide ALU with cash to further develop their “Manage for Growth” businesses.  The French government should be happy as ALU continues as a French entity.  

Major U.S. retail brands and the world’s largest online retailers have launched smart home automation offerings in the past six months and more are sure to follow.

When six U.S. luxury home automation players recently opted to join forces and form a single company: VIA International. The consolidation was carried out as a partnership, not a merger or acquisition. An unusual approach, but one that nevertheless has a number of drivers that speak to the development and fragmentation of the home automation market, as well as indications of where the market is heading.

At the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, I discovered Republic Wireless and learned about their new service and value proposition.  I had previously mentioned them in Competing against a Low-cost Disruptor with Policy Control and Charging.  Their pitch is to use Wi-Fi as much as possible and ride on the Sprint 3G network as a virtual operator.  Wi-Fi calls on a phone seems like a yawner, but their spin is to embed the Wi-Fi client into the mobile, and thereby simplifying the user interface.  The price is certainly attractive, $19/mo. for unlimited voice / txt / data.  The idea is that you will use Wi-Fi for your data needs at home, office, campus or Starbucks – which is what most of us do anyway.  I have a feeling that a subscriber watching YouTube Cat-Videos while on cellular would be sent packing. 

I recently attended the opening of Thales’ new Cyber Integration and Innovation Centre in the UK.  The centre is essentially a battle lab for improving the security of critical national infrastructure, as well as government and private sector organizations. Client systems are tested against a battery of open source tools and enterprise-grade security software by a team of highly-skilled technicians. Most pertinently, the lab includes a simulation of an industrial control room, complete with PLCs and SCADA systems (interchangeable with any other ICS the client may be using). Cyber attacks were run from ancillary rooms where Thales experts hijacked the ‘on-premise’ security equipment (camera feeds and the like) and launched DoS attacks to disrupt the control systems. The group stressed the importance of having the right tools to understand what was happening to the system, and good visualization of the massive amounts of data going through systems therefore plays quite an important role in being able to pick out suspicious activity from normal, everyday operations. Part of being able to counter attacks was the ability to effectively understand when an attack was occurring, and estimate the type and magnitude of the threat in order to properly respond.