Preparing IoT Smart Cities for the future

Christian Schnedler Presenting at Saudi Arabia CIO Summit

Security is my passion and I have been blessed with the opportunity to serve the field across five continents and over a dozen countries. I’m an evangelist of systems thinking and am especially fond of exploring emergent properties birthed from the collision of established industries. I’ve particularly enjoyed contributing to the evolution of analog to network surveillance, print to digital marketing and records management to big data analytics.

I began my career as the traditional analog security industry was being disrupted by networked surveillance, access control, and intrusion detection systems. I had the opportunity to serve a start-up contributing to this disruption named DVTel (originally founded to disrupt enterprise communications through “Digital Video over Telephony”). This networked security movement quickly spread to urban areas and collided with the burgeoning Smarter Cities industry to help propel the Safe City concept to where it is today (marketers love the opportunity to brand everything technology touches). During this period I was given the opportunity to serve on the Global Center of Excellence committee at IBM, the originator of the Smarter Planet ideology, and soon found myself on the front line of emerging markets development from the Middle East & Africa region.

Throughout this period of transformation within the government sector, I kept abreast of developments in the private sector through a portfolio of start-ups I helped form in the digital marketing space such as TangentVector, the /DRIVE enthusiast network, and WhiteSpaceFactory Creative. I witnessed first-hand how industry outpaced government and was given the opportunity in 2015 to serve the government directly as an executive at the New York Police Department. I graciously accepted and spent the proceeding few years broadening my understanding of the technical challenges public safety organizations face spanning Big Data to cybercrime and insider threats. I helped create a data analytics and visualization system named Cobalt to help operators manage the large volumes of information streaming from records management, open source, cyber, IoT sensors, and other sources. I continued to develop the NYPD’s master data management strategy through the conclusion of my service in 2018.

Protecting others from harm is among the noblest callings, and the realm of cybersecurity is the front line for those blessed with the ability to create new realities through technology. The worlds of physical and digital identity, security and monitoring are rapidly converging. It’s an amazing time to be at the forefront of the Internet of Things movement and why I am so excited about being part of the NOVAM advisory board.

So how is NOVAM contributing to the Internet of Things?

Achieving a strong security posture is a fundamental characteristic of thoughtful, design-forward systems that goes neglected far too often. The explosion of Internet of Things (IoT) devices drives growth in organizations’ cyber attack surface area that outpaces even the best-intentioned traditional security measures. The IoT industry is only just agreeing on a common set of principles for cyber hardening, of which most increase the burden on already-stretched administrative staff responsible for maintaining the ever-expanding IoT universe.

NOVAM represents the opportunity to integrate cutting-edge distributed ledger technology with Internet of Things devices to provide an unparalleled degree of cybersecurity assurity. NOVAM-enabled devices can report into a common dashboard for centralized administration of distributed IoT sensors at a fraction of the effort otherwise required. It is the technology of choice for information security professionals and the means by which security professionals will achieve domain awareness in the IoT battlefield.

This is why I lept at the opportunity to support the NOVAM team as they bring their concept to the world, and why I encourage others interested in the art of the possible to get to know NOVAM as well.