The recent appointment of Aziz Benmalek as CEO to cellular IoT provider Aeris gave him the opportunity to talk through the company’s value proposition and greater focus on cybersecurity solutions.
Aeris provides a connectivity management platform (CMP) for IoT companies to manage their devices, encapsulating industries such as automotive, healthcare, logistics, and others. It currently has 7,000+ enterprises on its platform.
According to Benmalek, “cellular IoT is an area that has been less served, and there is an opportunity for more cybersecurity and solutions in that space, similar to what has been done in OT and IT”.
“The need from enterprises is the ability to focus on managing their business,” Benmalek continued, “say you’re an auto car company with deployment of cars across the globe, from Asia to Europe to North America. The ability to have a platform and a ‘single pane of glass’ that allows you to manage the deployment of your vehicles in a connected way is pretty big.”
Aeris’ value proposition is offering this platform, or ‘single pane of glass’ that speaks to the visibility they seek to provide.
“I think value-added services will become more critical as we move forward, not only the platform, but the ability to perform analytics and have predictive maintenance, for example, is becoming critical,” added Benmalek.
Although the challenges for industry verticals can be universal with regards to ensuring connectivity and data-driven insights are part of the business, they can also vary from vertical to vertical. In the automotive industry, for instance, the endpoint is mobile and moving all the time, said Benmalek, as opposed to a fixed object, like a meter, so managing its connectivity can be complex.
“The level of sophistication of the end point is important as well,” he said. “The number of over-the-air updates from a software perspective are growing; cars are becoming computers on wheels. The number of endpoint and software updates and making sure it works with different components requires a unique solution; versus a simple meter somewhere that is recording the temperature or another parameter.”
Further cybersecurity education is needed
In more recent news, Aeris launched their latest solution: IoT Watchtower, a security solution that provides enterprises with visibility and control to reduce the risks of breaches and cyber attacks.
The launch of the solution followed the observation of 600,000 smart devices which showed an alarming amount of communication with the dark web where traffic cannot be observed and threats are rife. This market analysis is consistent with other news regarding data breaches, the threats to critical infrastructure and the ongoing, pressing need for robust cybersecurity.
The transition from predominantly consumer devices like laptops being attacked to IoT devices is something Benmalek regarded as taking place in the last 10 to 15 years, due to the increased number of devices correlating with an increased attack surface, and the massive amounts of data being generated that could be exploited.
“The IT world has evolved and developed a lot of endpoint security … the security in the IT space has grown in a big way,” said Benmalek, noting that this wasn’t the case with IoT security. “There is education in the market that needs to happen … Because you have lots of end points that are sending data … or sending data to different locations that you don’t want.”
Looking ahead, Benmalek’s aims as CEO are to grow the company, reduce complexity for enterprises managing their connectivity, and draw on lessons learned in the IT space for cellular IoT, “from security analytics to insights and AI that can help them automate and drive their business”.
The opportunities in the IoT industry are hugely exciting, he concluded, and Aeris’ unique value proposition makes it well-positioned to take advantage.
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