Inaugural ‘Living in the IoT’ conference a success

This month PETRAS’ collaborated with the IET and IoTUK to deliver ‘Living in the IoT’ a new conference focusing on working to develop a secure IoT to realise the socioeconomic benefits of an interconnected world.

The conference took place at Savoy Place on 28th and 29th March with international contributions and strong representation from academia, industry and policy communities.

The partnerships developed with the IET and IoTUK have proven hugely beneficial to PETRAS, enhancing the hub’s ability to reach larger audiences, increasing research visibility and impact

The research hub, PETRAS – for Privacy, Ethics, Trust, Reliability, Acceptability and Security – was set up in February 2016; it consists of nine universities with over 120 User and Research partner organisations in the Public, Private and NGO sectors. It has been my privilege to lead this world-class research team at PETRAS for the last two years and to see the great collaborations and partnerships which have flowed from the excellence and relevance in research that they have created.

The opening keynote of Living in the IoT was delivered by Dame Wendy Hall, Regis Professor of the Southampton Web Science Institute as she addressed ‘AI through the IoT looking glass’ which examined the rapidly developing ecosystem of IoT in the context of the socioeconomics of the internet.

Already most households own several IoT devices. They may be central heating thermostats, smart plugs and lamps or fitness monitoring wearables. More and more, these devices will be fitted as standard in new homes, offices and cars; some have become pervasive wearable accessories. At the same time, devices are being increasingly deployed in our environment, infrastructure, and throughout manufacturing and healthcare.

Cisco are one of PETRAS’ most valued partners and are key player in the future of IoT. So, it was with great pleasure that we were able to welcome Greg Akers, Senior Vice President Advanced Security Research and Government. His keynote on ‘Anticipating Surprise in an Era of Change’ was a real lesson on how to deliver successful research collaboration on a world stage whilst always keeping an adaptive eye on the burgeoning world of IoT devices that increasingly impacts our lives.

PETRAS is an EPSRC Hub programme supported by £9.8m funding from the Department for Digital, Culture Media and Sport. It is focussed on the Cybersecurity of the Internet of Things and aims to make these increasingly pervasive devices and their applications, safe, secure and trustworthy. The research hub is unusual in that it recognises that physical science and engineering, and the social sciences together, are needed to understand and address cybersecurity.

Professor Joe Butler is Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, so I was delighted that he agreed to start the second day of our conference with his views on ‘IoT: Secure by Design or Liability by Default?’. This is a topic particularly close to the hearts of the PETRAS community, and Professor Butler gave us some valuable insights. He pointed out that we need to establish ‘security before dependence’ on IoT technology, and that the use of IoT devices in our homes can present significant technical support loads, which should not fall on the consumer. Ultimately, rate restrictions to growth may be more associated with behavioural aspects and acceptability, than technical capability.

This first PETRAS/IET conference demonstrated the strong interest across all sectors, of looking at the Internet of Things through cross-disciplinary, sociotechnical lenses. The recognition that human needs drive the take-up of technologies, and that technologies drive behaviour, is key to this interest.

The success of the 2018 conference bodes well for future collaboration with the IET, in particular linking the IET India IoT Congress to future PETRAS events. It is also excellent that the IET have decided to launch a journal centred on the sociotechnical aspects of the IoT – Trustworthy IoT. The first edition is likely to showcase some of the papers presented at ‘Living in the IoT’. I look forward to further collaboration.