Integrated Systems

Challenges of connected home security

by Mark Rowe

The smarthome revolution is upon us, and home security and safety are undeniably in consumer demand, writes Thomas Rockmann, pictured, Vice President – Connected Home, at the telecoms firm Deutsche Telekom.

I firmly believe that the market potential for monitored security alarms is significant and represents one of the most attractive routes into the connected home market. While it is an established market answering a clear consumer need, MarketsandMarkets recently forecast that the total European home security market will achieve a CAGR of over 25.4 per cent over the next five years, driven by new and innovative developments in monitoring, the growth of digital door locks, wireless sensors and more sophisticated integrated cameras, with the latter contributing the largest share of overall growth.

There are many examples of these advantageous pairings, such as D-Link’s Wireless Indoor and Outdoor Cameras, which coupled with a QIVICON Home Base are capable of alerting a consumer that someone is at the door when they’re not at home. The potential benefits of combining, for example, a motion detector and an outside siren from Bitron, or the Bitron smoke detector which can also be used as an alarm signal, means that if the former is triggered, the latter provides the alert. Not only are these examples now possible, they’re achievable for wallet-friendly sums too, and due to their distributed nature, easily upgraded piecemeal by consumers.

People’s homes are their safe places in a busy world – and this is much more than about protecting possessions, but also extends to guarding against internal and external threats to the fabric of the house, by water leaks for example, and also to monitoring the movements of children and the safety of vulnerable relatives living in other homes.

For instance, in Norway, the idea of a social community network has been successfully deployed by Sfty. The system alerts not only the authorities, but also friends, family and neighbours, in the case of an alarm. The overall picture is one of innovation, and this not only offers opportunities for businesses of all sizes, but also is potentially market disruptive to those enterprises that ignore the implications.

However, there are challenges in this burgeoning market, and they’re not centred around the sensors, the hardware or even necessarily the services in themselves. In fact, the proliferation of smart security and safety sensors of the Internet of Things (IoT) may not play a decisive role in this market.

It is already clear that – as highlighted by numerous privacy groups – there are significant data privacy questions to be considered before the market can gain the traction it should. The challenge is that the real value of a connected device is that it learns about you as it is used, and it is functionality can be enhanced over time. As such, that learning, intrinsically involves some sort of data logging in the cloud. To overcome these concerns and satisfy European data protection regulations, building trust with consumers will be fundamental. To achieve this, companies will need to be transparent about the types and proposed use of data they collect. Furthermore, when one considers that the connected home will be an attractive target for hackers, it is clear that security is of critical importance.

At Deutsche Telekom Connected Home, we believe the connected home security is only just beginning, but we also believe that these challenges need to be resolved transparently and holistically for all market players’ benefit, as well as for our trust in our own homes – a fact that Jon Carter from our team will be speaking about at the upcoming IFSEC International on “Smart Homes – overcoming barriers to adoption”.

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