Tech companies are stepping up Internet of Things technologies to protect against COVID-19 and future viruses by using LiDAR and infrared cameras to detect a person’s body temperature from a distance or even handwashing.
Keeping the data secure in such detection is also going to be a challenge. One approach is to put a chip inside an IoT device when it is manufactured to enable strong authentication and secure communication, mainly to guard against device counterfeiting.
Hitachi Vantara has touted forward looking infrared cameras (FLIR) cameras to detect the temperature of a person from a distance. That way a passenger on a train or a worker or a customer in a store can be non-intrusively screened, according to a blog from Mark Jules, global vice president of smart spaces and video intelligence.
If a high temperature is detected, an organization can direct that person to a secondary confirming test or quarantine. Sensing elevated body temperature can be a first step in a layered approach to detection, Jules noted. Such technology is already used at airports, but many organizations could use such technology.
He also suggested that 3D LiDAR combined with computer vision and machine learning can learn to detect correct handwashing. It can also be used to monitor patients when they fall out of a bed, slump over in a restroom or slip on a floor to quicken response time by caregivers.
Combining data from these detection methods can help organizations identify trends to note high-risk areas.
To keep data private and secure from IoT devices that may have been counterfeited, Sectigo and Infineon Technologies have developed automated certificate provisioning of Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chips for private key storage.
“Including a TPM chip in an IoT device design is the first step in enabling strong authentication and secure communication for IoT devices,” said Alan Grau, vice president of IoT/Embedded at Sectigo, a provider of PKI systems and services.
Sectigo and Infineon enable IoT device makers to deploy strong authentication and secure communication for IoT devices during the manufacturing of the device.
Their approach integrates the Infineon OPTIGA TPM 2.0 with Sectigo’s IoT Identity Manager product. Device makers can provision certificates into devices before they leave the factory, meeting the requirements of the California IoT Security Law, the companies said in a statement. From there, manufacturers can then track the component throughout the supply chain to protect against device counterfeiting.
Protecting against counterfeiting is seen as another way of ensuring the safety of data down the line.
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