Challenges put by the ubiquity of IoT devices

More than 16 years after the term’s first appearance, it’s still hard to find a comprehensive definition of the term “Internet of Things.” Around 2010, it started to gain popularity, replacing or supplementing “machine-to-machine” (M2M) communication.

That year, McKinsey wrote: “The physical world itself is becoming a type of information system. In what’s called the Internet of Things, sensors and actuators embedded in physical objects – from roadways to pacemakers – are linked through wired and wireless networks, often using the same Internet Protocol that connects the Internet.”

In that same period, market research company Gartner included “the Internet of Things” in its annual hype cycle for emerging technologies for the first time. Still, the IoT didn’t get widespread attention for some time and the concept only got public recognition by January 2014, when the IoT was a major theme at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Only by 2016 had the IoT become one of the most widely used concepts among tech communities, startup owners, as well as business tycoons.