by Dr. Jane Fitzgerald | Dec 12, 2020 | Blockchain, Emerging Technology
Blockchain is an encrypted distributed database that records data. It can also be explained as a digital archive of all transactions and contracts that need to be registered independently. One of blockchain’s key advantages is that it is accessible through hundreds of thousands of computers and not limited to one location. The technology has already started to threaten the financial services market and also establishes the digital currency for a Bitcoin transaction.
Image Provided by Pixabay
With Blockchain technology in the financial sector, participants can interact directly and transact over the internet without third party interference; these transactions via blockchain do not share participant personal information and create a transaction record by encrypting identifying details. Blockchain’s most thrilling feature is that it significantly reduces the risk of a data breach. In contrast to traditional processes, multiple shared copies of the same database are present in the blockchain. This makes it difficult to perform any data violations attack or cyber attack. With all the characteristics that resist fraud, blockchain technology can revolutionize various business sectors and make processes more intelligent, secure, transparent, and efficient than traditional business processes.
Benefits of Blockchain Technology
- Direct transactions that eliminate overheads and intermediary costs.
- Highly secure due to cryptographic and blockchain’s decentralized protocols.
- Increased time effectiveness due to real-time transactions.
- More transparent processes with proper record creation and tracking.
- Reduced risks related to cybercrimes, frauds, and tampering.
Applications of Blockchain Technology in Various Industries
Blockchain’s technology enhances many sectors such as Financial Services, Education, Government, Travel and Entertainment, Retail, and CPG.
Financial services
Blockchain technology, in many innovative ways, has already been implemented in the financial services sector. By offering an integrated trading lifecycle, blockchain technology simplifies and streamlines the entire process associated with asset management and payments, allowing all participants to access the same transaction data. It eliminates the need for brokers or intermediaries and guarantees accountability and effective transactional data management.
Healthcare
By increasing the privacy, security, and interoperability of the healthcare data, blockchain plays a crucial role in the medical sector. It can solve several interoperability challenges in the sector. The various organizations and people involved in the process can safely share data among themselves. By eliminating third-party intrusion, overhead costs decrease, and with secure encryptions, distributed databases store health records and digital signatures in blockchain to ensure confidentiality and authenticity.
Government
The technology of blockchain has the potential to change government processes and services. It can play a key role in improving data transaction challenges in the government’s current silo sector. The proper connection and sharing of data with blockchain allow better data management between several departments. It enhances transparency and strengthens transaction tracking and auditing processes.
CPG and Retail
The retail market could benefit greatly from Blockchain technology implementation. What the database will do is ensure that high-quality goods are genuinely authentic, prevent fraudulent transactions, find stolen items, enable virtual guarantees, manage loyalty points, and streamline supply chain operations.
Travel and hospitality
Blockchain’s application can change the travel and hospitality industry radically. Money transactions, storing key documents such as passports/other ID cards, reservations, and travel management, loyalty, and rewards can be processed through Blockchain.
Image Provided by Wikipedia
Key Challenges of using Blockchain Technology
Lack of understanding and knowledge of the technological concept are the main challenges of using it in non-financial services industries. The problems associated with the current legacy of corporate infrastructures and the lack of sufficient technological expertise are major barriers to blockchain’s widespread adoption. Adopting blockchain often means shifting culture from conventional ways of doing stuff, as it entails a significant change towards decentralizing the entire process. Compliance with current regulations and maintaining the privacy and protection needed for shared databases also adds to the key roadblocks in blockchain adoption.
The world of business will yet thoroughly explore the distinctions of the blockchain concept. Yet, we expect that the business world will soon see the vast potential of this technology with ongoing research and development in this field and to push a new wave of decentralized applications.
by Dr. Jane Fitzgerald | Oct 27, 2020 | Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Industrial IoT
What is IIoT and its Link to Manufacturing?
The IIoT is part of a broader framework called the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT is a network of smart computers, devices, and objects that gather and share vast amounts of data. The data collected is sent to a central cloud-based service. Here, compiled with other data, end-users find it useful. IoT can improve the automation of homes, classrooms, stores, and many industries.
Implementing the IoT to the manufacturing industry refers to the IIoT (or Industrial Internet or Industry 4.0). It revolutionizes the production process, allowing much more data collection and storage at far higher speeds and far more effectively than before. A host of innovative companies began using smart connected devices in their factories to introduce the IIoT.
What are the Benefits of IIoT?
Image Credit: Wikimedia
For industrial organizations, the IIoT may significantly improve communication, performance, scalability, time savings, and cost savings. Because of predictive maintenance, improved safety, and other operational efficiencies, companies are already benefiting from it through cost savings. IIoT networks of intelligent devices enable manufacturing companies to break open data silos and connect their people, data, and processes from the factory floor to the executive offices. Business leaders can use IIoT data to provide a comprehensive and detailed insight into how their company is doing, which will help them make informed decisions.
Protocols
One of the issues encountered during the IIoT transition is that various edge-of-network devices have historically used different protocols to send and receive data. Many different communication protocols are currently in use, such as OPC-UA. The transfer protocol Message Queueing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is rapidly emerging as the standard for IIoT, due to its lightweight overhead, publish/subscribe model, and bidirectional capabilities. Read more on MQTT here.
Challenges
The two biggest challenges surrounding IIoT implementation are probably interoperability and security. As technology writer Margaret Rouse observes: “Industrial IoT is a major concern about interoperability between devices and machines that use different protocols and have different architectures.” For this, Ignition is an excellent solution because it is cross-platform and based on open-source, IT-standard technologies.
Companies need to know how secure their data is. The proliferation of sensors and other intelligent, connected devices led to a parallel explosion of security vulnerabilities; this is another factor in MQTT’s growth. It’s a very stable protocol.
The Future of the IIoT
The IIoT remains one of the fundamental phenomena that today and in the future impact industrial enterprises. Industries push for the modernization of systems and equipment to comply with new regulations, maintain increasing speed and volatility, and deal with disruptive technologies. Companies that have embraced the IIoT have seen significant improvements in safety, efficiency, and profitability. This trend will continue as the technologies grow widely.
The Ignition IIoT system significantly increases industrial organizations’ communication, performance, scalability, time savings, and cost savings. It can unite people and processes on the plant’s floor to those on the enterprise’s level. It also enables companies to get the most value out of their system without being limited by technological and economic constraints. For these and more reasons, Ignition offers the ideal forum for bringing IIoT’s power into your company.
by Dr. Jane Fitzgerald | Apr 2, 2020 | Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Emerging Technology, Information Technology
Image from Forbes.com
Artificial Intelligence, AI, has been integrated into mainstream society, so much so, that most people use it almost every hour of every day without even noticing. My first experience with AI was through cyborgs in movies and I know some people will go immediately to the killer AI, Skynet, from the Terminator movie franchise. However, the reality is, AI is a more complex and diverse field than just murderous machines from the future.
Social Media
We interact with Artificial Intelligence every day, for example, social media: the main application that utilizes this technology. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, they use AI to keep tabs on their users and target ads for any content they are advertising. Even Google’s algorithm is a form of artificial intelligence that helps us all find what we need online in an instant. Next time you use google search when you are halfway through typing, stop and take a look at the suggestions it provides. More often than not, it typically pulls like searches from around the world, but it also takes past searches and websites you have visited previously drawing conclusions for suggested web pages. A perfect example of one form of AI in our lives, and a form some of us could not live without.
AI That Moves You
A commonly missed version of AI would be that which is built into our vehicles, from giving us new routes or accurate directions to vehicles that even drive themselves. Self-driving cars are here and wildly popular; while much of that technology is used in expensive vehicles, it is making its way to the inexpensive models. For example: many newer vehicles can stop if the car in front stops unexpectedly, what a great use of AI. Not only that, but AI is also utilized to help people take different routes to and from their destinations based on traffic patterns, just as google draws conclusions for suggested web pages, AI frequently saves time via alternate routes while driving. AI is everywhere!!
AI Fears
Some people have raised concerns with the rapid rate of development of AI, the fear that they are invading our privacy. This fear is justifiable when most of our first interactions with this technology are Hollywood blockbusters with murderous AI’s that try to wipe out all humanity, but let’s remember AI is more than that. This popular movie premise has some people living off the grid to avoid all intelligence, but it is important to remember, good or bad we are making great strides and our nation is prosperous, in part, due to those strides in AI. At the end of the day, AI can scare you, it can inspire you, or it can do a bit of both, but the decision to accept AI into our life is up to us!
https://www.tech21century.com/how-ai-has-influenced-our-society/
Biometric Identification and Cybersecurity
