The same thing often happens in the smart home market as in the technology sector in general: most manufacturers decide to go their own way, leaving their product isolated from the home ecosystem itself.
There is no doubt that, for a segment that could exceed 13,300 million euros in 2030, according to ABI Research, this can be a tripping point, since the end user seeks comfort, speed and ease when installing and connecting the home.
In this regard, as consumer interest grows, so do the challenges faced by manufacturers of smart home products, as well as third parties developing security solutions. software for its control and automation.
The curious thing about this segment, however, is the wide variety of devices that exist, to which new manufacturers are added more and more frequently, especially if we take a look at air fryers and robot vacuum cleaners, the kings of this market .
If the Google Assistant wasn’t working with your Smart Home devices, you weren’t the only one
According to an analysis carried out by Witailer, a digital consulting, technology and business solutions agency, household products exceeded the barrier of 240 million euros within Amazon Spain during 2022.
In this way, the world’s largest electronic commerce saw last year how in Spain the volume of searches for air fryers and robot vacuum cleaners exceeded 210 million, highlighting brands such as Cosori, Cecotec and Xiaomi.
Now, here comes the big problem: each brand has a different application for home control and it can become a headache to connect all of them.
For this reason, we have spoken with manufacturers and experts to find out how they are going to face important challenges such as prices, the integration of different devices and, of course, cybersecurity.
Matter, the standard that has sat rivals like Apple and Samsung at the same table
To try to solve this, there is the Connectivity Standards Alliance –formerly known as the Zigbee Alliance–, a group of companies in the sector that seeks to unify standards so that smart homes do not encounter this impediment.
Thus, at the end of 2022, the international alliance announced the implementation of Matter, a protocol initially proposed in 2019 and agreed upon by major rivals such as Apple, Google, Samsung or Amazon.
In this sense, manufacturers such as spca Spanish brand with extensive experience in smart connectivity, have opted for standards such as Tuya –which is based on Matter– to have integration with voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.
“Working under the Tuya standard not only allows us this compatibility, but also offers us full interoperability with other devices that operate under the same standard”, he explains to computer today Irene Manterola, director of marketing and communication at SPC.
Precisely, SPC was the first company that in 2018 launched a complete ecosystem that could be managed from a single application, SPC IoT, with the aim that the user could easily create custom scenes or routines.
Of course, here begins another challenge for the connected house: some apps do not allow you to add devices from other brands, simply and simply, because they fail to recognize them. In such a case, we would have products that do not communicate with each other.
Daniel Cortés, director of technology at INMUNE Technology Institute, believes that it is “unlikely” that manufacturers agree and think about a connected home as a whole.
For Cortes, there are still certain barriers that hinder its mass adoption by consumerssuch as installation complexity, lack of knowledge, privacy and security concerns, and cost of devices.
On this last point, Cortés recommends being very clear about which devices you want to connect in the first place, and starting with those with a more affordable price, such as light bulbs, plugs, thermostats or smart speakers, so as not to regret it later.
Finally, if you have managed to connect your entire house without any problem, now one of the most important steps remains: protecting it against possible cyberattacks.
The connected home, a very attractive segment for cybercriminals
If you don’t know where to start connecting a house, it is best to think first of all about home security, before launching into a purchase that could later turn against you.
In this sense, Marc Rivero, senior security researcher at Kaspersky, recommends be careful if we have bought a second-hand product“since it could have been maliciously modified, contain malware and therefore pose a threat to privacy.”
Nobody likes that the presumably most private site of their day to day becomes an insecure place in which it is unknown if, through any device, there are intruders on the network.
Rivero remembers that security breaches can arrive, precisely, due to the lack of standardization and that whenever we use smart devices that collect information, there is a “risk”, however small, that someone can access it.
“This information is very valuable to cybercriminals and other malicious people who can use it to commit fraud, phishing and other crimes,” he explains.
In the case of the connected house, precisely cyberattacks on smart home devices increased 87% globally last yearaccording to data from SonicWall, which places the Smart Home as the segment with the highest growth within the set of malware.
Among the main objectives of the attackers of IoT devices, the theft of personal or bank data, cryptocurrency mining and even the development of botnets stood out, that is, that our device forms part of an “army” of terminals controlled by third parties. .
So that this does not happen, companies such as Kaspersky offer in their cybersecurity services the possibility of managing home connectivity and knowing which devices are part of the smart home. But if you still suffer an attack…
“The first thing you should do is notify the provider and ask that measures be taken to ensure data protection,” Rivero details. “It’s also important to change passwords and monitor bank accounts for any suspicious activity.”
That said, the best thing is that when connecting your smart home do not rush: choose the devices you prefer first; look for an ecosystem that you can integrate and, of course, ensure your safety. After all, it is your home.