What is IoT monitoring? Key use cases

Why is IoT monitoring important?

IoT monitoring ensures IoT environments are configured properly, perform as required and are secure. Important factors in IoT monitoring can include the following:

• Configuration. IoT devices that cannot be discovered and managed compromise efficiency, data quality and security. IoT monitoring checks that each device is properly connected and can exchange real-time data, validates each device's configuration and then enforces those configurations against an established baseline. IoT monitoring, for example, might let administrators tag and organize IoT devices in ways that simplify deployment and visualization or enable administrators to configure device options such as IoT connectivity protocols or battery life.
• Performance. IoT monitoring tools help measure and validate the IoT environment's operational integrity. Performance factors -- such as bandwidth utilization, latency, data quality, device uptime or device health, device battery life and IoT device diagnostic responses -- can all be checked before data is collected and processed. Any performance issue can be reported quickly, helping administrators remediate issues effectively and minimize impacts on data integrity.
• Security. IoT data is a vital and sensitive business asset and must be protected carefully. IoT monitoring tools ensure that IoT devices use suitable encryption and authentication to protect access and data, and that these components maintain detailed access logs that can be scanned and evaluated for unauthorized use or potential breaches. IoT monitoring could, for example, alert administrators when a device is using a default password and thus request implementation of a strong password.

Benefits and challenges of IoT monitoring

IoT monitoring provides enterprises with the following key benefits:

• Better IoT performance. Ensures every device in the IoT environment is configured for optimum performance, including preferred IoT connectivity protocols, desired data elements and appropriate levels of power use.
• Better IoT security. Enhances security by ensuring every connected IoT device is properly configured and able to alert administrators to any potential security vulnerability or possible intrusion that might compromise sensitive IoT data.
• Effective IoT maintenance. Reveals defective, disconnected or power-challenged devices before significant data loss or data quality issues endanger IoT operations and analytics. Administrators can address problems quickly and schedule service to maintain the IoT fleet and the network efficiently.
• Clearer IoT organization. Configures IoT devices with tags, labels and metadata to help companies organize devices and produce reports that illustrate device locations and relationships. Organizing IoT devices also enables configurations to be handled on a group basis.

Despite the benefits, however, IoT monitoring poses several important challenges:

• Scalability. IoT networks can span hundreds of thousands -- or even millions -- of connected devices across buildings, regions and countries. IoT monitoring supports large environments, but it's important to consider whether the monitoring platform is capable of scaling further as the network grows.
• Compatibility. IoT devices must communicate with the network and, often, each other. Large and complex IoT environments comprise devices with differing manufacturers, firmware, protocols, data elements and other factors that can create compatibility and performance problems. IoT administrators must continually address these issues as the IoT environment evolves.
• Storage and processing. Large and complex IoT environments generate vast amounts of real-time data that is transmitted, stored and then processed to produce useful analytics. The network's infrastructure must be equipped with hardware capable of supporting analytics, reporting and automation. Storage and processing designs can be particularly difficult in remote locations or mobile IoT deployments, such as autonomous vehicles.
• Maintenance. All IoT device fleets require battery replacement and other maintenance. While maintenance tasks can be relatively simple and mundane, the time demands add up. Maintaining an IoT fleet of thousands of devices -- or more -- can quickly become time- and cost-prohibitive, tying up busy staff and disrupting more creative or strategic tasks. IoT monitoring can help plan and schedule routine maintenance, but no amount of monitoring can recover this cumulative time burden.

Factors to consider when selecting an IoT monitoring tool

Cost and ease of use are common considerations when choosing a tool. Beyond those, selecting an IoT monitoring tool will depend on the specific features and functionality your organization needs. Regardless of the monitoring system selected, look for the following key features:

• Device discovery. The ability to accurately detect and connect IoT devices with an absolute minimum of friction is essential. The tool must be flexible and capable of tracking a wide variety of devices. Using network scans, agents or even manual designations is time-consuming and error-prone, and it is notoriously difficult to update over time.
• Centralized management. Consider a tool that offers centralized management, providing single-pane-of-glass visibility into all aspects of the entire IoT environment. Using more than one tool can impose significant challenges for IoT device monitoring and management.
• Device organization. The ability to apply tags, labels and other metadata to each IoT device enables components to be organized and displayed as logical groups based on a range of desirable criteria, such as building, type, owner, purpose, project and so on. Devices should be searchable based on metadata, allowing administrators to drill down to specific devices efficiently.
• Status tracking. The monitoring tool should be able to receive and report on status factors, such as device health, security and performance. Malfunctioning or misconfigured devices should be readily displayed.
• Security. Ensure the tool can support and enforce security features at the device level (such as firmware version reporting or authentication) as well as the network level (such as the use of end-to-end encryption). As with status tracking, security issues should be easily recognizable to administrators.
• Alerting and reporting. Look for a tool that can produce regular reports, including summaries of the IoT environment and its configuration, display useful IoT environment metrics in a dashboard format and offer real-time alerts for malfunctioning or misconfigured devices.
• Workflow management. Some tools offer a workflow platform that can support automation and procedural workflows intended to shepherd common IoT tasks from start to finish.
• Energy analytics. Some tools provide energy analytics capable of summarizing IoT device energy use, battery (or charge) life and energy costs.
• Integrations. The ability to integrate with other important enterprise platforms, such as help desk or ticketing platforms, enables IoT maintenance and support to be added quickly and effectively to other help capabilities.

Future of IoT monitoring

The next stage of IoT monitoring focuses on making tools more intelligent and more valuable. The goal: Enable more efficient and scalable deployments.

More autonomous IoT monitoring provides a variety of key business benefits, among them alerting and reporting. Through technologies such as ML and AI, autonomy enables networks to optimize their connectivity as traffic conditions change or suggest more efficient device configurations to enhance performance.

Organizations without IoT device monitoring are courting trouble. It's like driving a car without a gas gauge or speedometer: reckless at best and potentially disastrous for the organization and its IoT investment.