Government Data Storage Trends to Watch in 2018

government data

Government Data Storage Trends to Watch in 2018

6 minutes

As the world is digitized, there is rising concern among consumers about the security of their information. The Internet of Things (IoT) is bringing forth a plethora of products that record and transmit details about our daily lives, from our health and behaviors to our search habits and whereabouts. Perhaps nowhere does the people’s trust hang more in the balance than in the public sector. Federal, state and local agencies collect and store some of the most sensitive personal data there is, from Social Security numbers to tax reports to motor vehicle information, background checks, medical exams, voting records and public surveillance footage. 

An article from Deloitte Insights spells out the challenges. “Government stores far more data than the private sector and often keeps it on older, more vulnerable systems. Agencies are regularly targeted not just by opportunistic hackers but by teams funded and trained by nation-states. And even as governments try to protect themselves against hostile intruders, employees and citizens alike want their data conveniently available anytime, anywhere.”

What’s a government CIO to do?

Many government decision makers are putting new resources toward cyber threats, according to the 2018 Technology Forecast put out by National Association of State CIOs. “Cybersecurity maturity in state governments is improving as risk-based strategies are being adopted,” according to the association. Some 98% of CIOs surveyed for the technology forecast are leading or participating in cybersecurity policy setting. Data storage is a key part of that policy creation. 

Creating a better consumer experience

For the past 100 years, Panasonic has been all about creating a better experience for the consumer. We’ve done that through consumer electronics products and home appliances, and more recently, we’ve engineered these experiences in collaboration with businesses and government entities through integrated solutions that impact the lives of our customer’s customers. We're using today's most disruptive technologies to reimagine how we live and work. IoT is one such technology. As more products, services and devices talk to each other, link and sync, massive volumes of data are being created, and with this wealth of information comes pressing requirements for management and storage. Government must be especially proactive and vigilant, as sensitive constituent data could be lucrative in the hands of criminals.

Here are a few things the public sector needs to know about the future of data storage, to provide constituents and themselves with peace of mind.

1. Machines will produce an unimaginable amount of data 

IoT connected products are producing millions upon millions of small files at an accelerating rate. The advent of machine learning will only add to the data overload as devices rip through vast amounts of information in the blink of an eye. Research firm SINTEF estimates that by 2020, IoT connected objects will produce over 40,000 exabytes of machine-generated data. Big Data and storage subsystems must be able to handle the high capacity and keep scaling to keep up with growth. 

2. Regulations can dictate storage

New laws, regulations and court decisions are creating data storage and intelligent archive demands that did not previously exist. The Federal Records Act requires certain government agencies to retain electronic documents for more than 100 years. Some police departments must retain surveillance videos from interviews and interrogations for a duration longer than 999 days.

New rules that take effect in the EU later this year promise sweeping changes in how citizen data can be collected, used and stored. Data experts have called the General Data Protection Regulation, which rolls out on May 25 in the EU—the biggest change to global privacy rules in more than two decades. Data experts suggest that the EU rules will impact U.S. companies, and possibly U.S. government practices. Experts are also closely watching a U.S. government case in front of the Supreme Court involving efforts to force Microsoft to hand over emails held on its servers in Dublin. The outcome could have major ramifications on data storage and privacy.

3. Ransomware is everywhere

Businesses and governments responsible for the data produced by connected devices will be increasingly vulnerable to data hijacking, aka ransomware, where hackers lock or encrypt files so they can’t be read unless their owner pays a ransom. Where you store your files can mitigate vulnerability, and data archive solutions that offer absolute immutability will be the long-term storage choice of this new, IoT powered world.

There is no doubt, the digitization of information and processes can help government enhance services, save money and improve the quality of life of its citizens. Investing in a strong cybersecurity strategy and risk-based technologies is mission critical to support these processes.

Authors
Mike Pullman - Director of Data & Storage Systems at Panasonic Corp. of North America
Pullman has extensive experience serving the government vertical.

The Internet of Vehicles

the-internet-of-vehicles

The Internet of Vehicles

3 minutes

As innovation accelerates, it isn’t hard to imagine a world where cars drive themselves, or even fly. But cars that talk and think? You might be shaking your head, but that’s exactly where mobility is headed.

At ITS World Congress that starts in mid-September in Copenhagen, Panasonic’s Jarrett Wendt will offer ideas on the connected vehicle ecosystem enabling cars to communicate with each other and the road around them. If your travels don’t include Denmark in September, here are a few highlights.

The world is changing at hyper speed

As anyone in the tech world understands, disruption is the new normal. Constant innovation is now the price of entry, and the rate of change is increasing exponentially. Adoption rates have also accelerated dramatically. As inventor and futurist and Ray Kurzweil noted, we won’t experience 100 years of progress in this century – at today’s accelerated pace, it will be more like 20,000 years worth.

In our recent “Moving Forward,” research series, Panasonic Corp. of North America assesses how senior technology decision makers in industries including automotive view the technologies they see driving us forward, and the impact of these technologies on future plans. By 2025, 10 disruptive technologies are expected to generate trillions of dollars of economic impact. Our new research reveals that tech decision makers in automotive, avionics industries and related government agencies say their companies have already adopted five of these technologies on average. And four have risen to the top of their innovation agendas – energy storage, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence and sustainable energy. Panasonic is deeply engaged in all of them.

The future of transportation is integrated

There has been a great deal of prototyping and testing of Intelligent Transportation Systems, but working with the Colorado Dept. of Transportation, Panasonic has developed a phased approach that will allow DOTs to effectively deploy these technologies at scale. Not just a system for main highways and thoroughfares, but for all roadways and arteries throughout an entire state or region.

Our role? A technology-agnostic strategic consultant, general contractor and solution integrator.

We’re one year into our real-world deployment along a particularly challenging 90 mile stretch of I-70 in Colorado, connecting Denver to Vail, where Coloradans face steep grades, severe curves, often-extreme weather, visibility and congestion difficulties. This is a 5-year, $72 million V2X program featuring a road-operator managed data platform deployed on active, open roadways.

Data has the power to drive safety

With our Intelligent Transportation solution, we’re talking about empowering DOTs with the ability to analyze everything from speed and heading, to windshield wiper and traction control status – providing valuable context on road conditions.

Suddenly, a roadway operator can receive this data and make up-to-the-minute decisions about deploying snowplows during winter storms – or optimize how traffic flows through the city in real time.

This technology can also communicate instantly about emergency braking and crashes, and enables customized alerts to be sent to cars in specific locations instantaneously.

Imagine driving along the highway in the mountains and a crash occurs 1,000 feet down the road and around a blind turn. V2X will enable our vehicles to warn us or even react on our behalf – to prevent us from becoming a part of the incident even before the compromised vehicle is visible. And emergency services can be deployed more expeditiously, and more cost-effectively, than ever before.

Talking cars can reduce traffic

Connected vehicle technology will save lives through a significant reduction in the number of non-impaired crashes – estimates are as high as 80%. CDOT estimates as much as a 400% increase in roadway efficiency with wide scale deployment of connected vehicle technology – without the expense of widening roadways and adding lanes. The system is also expected to reduce the amount of time people spend in traffic and lessen the environmental impact of idling cars by mitigating congestion.

Read more about how disruptive technology is impacting transportation in The Year of the Smart Highway.

Authors
Tom Gebhardt - Chairman and CEO, Panasonic Corporation of North America

Building a wireless future that is far-reaching and accessible

Future of Bluetooth Mesh Networks

Building a wireless future that is far-reaching and accessible

4 minutes

The most inspiring example of the power of mesh networks, a distributed communication system, where each device acts as a node that can relay data to the others, lies in the island of Puerto Rico. That’s where a couple of volunteers with antennas, wireless mesh devices and solar panels helped to restore communications for relief effort coordinators in Barranquitas, a city battered by Hurricane Maria. “Within three days, volunteers were using both technologies to more effectively coordinate the delivery of food and medicine,” according to an article in Quartz.

Disaster management and public safety is one reason for the strong growth forecast for the global wireless mesh network market, but not the only one, according to a new report by Zion Market Research. Its study finds that the global wireless mesh network market was valued at $3.84 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach around $9.08 billion by 2024. The oil & gas Industry, video streaming and surveillance, smart mobility and smart city applications are among the biggest drivers of growth of mesh networking thanks to its promise of low-cost access to broadband services.

Bluetooth 5.0 was officially deployed in 2016 with a focus on enhancing the range, speed and data capacity for the connections. It also had another promising role: IoT connectivity. Where Bluetooth had previously been thought of as a 1-to-1 connection between devices, this concentration on IoT tech allows for the connection of multiple devices and, ultimately, the cloud.

Recent research on disruptive technology by Panasonic shows that many companies have adopted mobile devices, apps and commerce and the cloud, and three in five have adopted the Internet of Things (IoT). Senior tech decision makers believe these technologies are critical to their future success, according to our research. Clearly developments, such as mesh networking, that yield fruitful deployments of disruptive technology are important to these decision makers.

Wide-ranging applications

Bluetooth mesh network represents a major step towards a more accessible and wide-ranging wireless future. It allows for multiple devices to connect to the same network and all communicate seamlessly and in real time. A standard Bluetooth network is similar to a speaker presenting to an audience. The speaker may address the entire audience or individual members and audience members may address a question to the speaker, but audience members don’t communicate among themselves. In a Bluetooth mesh network audience members may address one another. This topology has two advantages. First, since a single message may travel along many routes to its destination, this dramatically increases the probability that the message arrives. The second advantage is the increased distance a message may travel – like one audience member speaking to another.

While standard Bluetooth recently upgraded its range in the Bluetooth 5.0 update, mesh networking hypothetically allows for infinite range if the proper chain links are in place.

Mesh networks in healthcare

There are pioneering Bluetooth mesh network examples in healthcare. Hospitals are using Bluetooth beacons to monitor and track equipment. But helping nurses locate equipment is just the surface of Bluetooth’s capabilities in the health system. Using this tech, doctors and nurses could monitor patients from anywhere, significantly reducing the need for hospital visits. These visits are both costly and potentially dangerous due to the risk of things like contagious diseases and infection. Not only would a doctor or nurse be able to monitor patients wirelessly, but a patient’s devices at home could do things like monitor temperature through biometric sensors and automatically notify the drug store to deliver medicine if the patient got a fever.

Benefits to manufacturing

There are also clear benefits from the Bluetooth mesh network in the manufacturing sector, especially where multiple machines operate simultaneously on the plant floor. Previously, if two devices situated beyond the range of a Bluetooth device needed to communicate, it would require either a wired connection or gateway that could connect to the cloud. This cloud connection requires Wi-Fi, which uses significantly more energy. Now with the mesh network, every single device in the entire factory can connect to each other via Bluetooth, and even the ones farthest away can communicate if necessary by bouncing the signal through other devices on the way.

Bluetooth mesh networking is just one piece of the wireless future that is to come. Read more in our Future of Wireless Everything series. 

Authors
Jeff Howell - President of Panasonic Industrial Devices Sales Company of America