The very high levels of integration available today mean that development platforms often have just a few components, making them almost ideal hardware for production. Distributors works with many companies to customise existing boards such as the Raspberry Pi to meet their exact needs, or developing bespoke hardware to specific requirements, allowing more engineering resource to be applied to the code, where most of the complexity and much of the product differentiation will reside.

Conclusion – Security is one of the Biggest Challenges for IoT

Today almost every electronic device can benefit from connection to the internet, whether to allow remote control, monitoring or simply logging and analysis of data. The connection, however, creates many potential risks that must be addressed with appropriate security at the device and system level. With semiconductor and software vendors providing support for security features from encryption to physical security, there is now no excuse for IoT product developers who fail to build in security. Engineers, however, are faced with having to overcome the complexity that is inevitable with the additional functionality, and so they must look towards suppliers to help them meet these challenges.