Data Security in Smart Homes – Nathan Hart, Canonical

This is Textron TV. Hey everyone, welcome back to techstrunk TV. I'm really happy to introduce you to our next guest today.

His name is Nathan Hart and Nathan is with canonical. Hey, Nathan welcome. Hey Alan, thanks for having me on the show.

It's our pleasure to have you on Nathan. Well, let's start with a little bit of your personal background. Sorry listeners or viewers understand who who's here today.

Yeah, well, my name is Nathan Hart. I'm a product manager at canonical. I've been here with canonical for a little over a year and a half right now.

From the US originally but currently based here in Paris and my background is in engineering. So I've been in the smart home space really my entire career designing smart home devices writing the low level firmware up through Linux level code and now you're a canonical kind of between that business and Tech side of things. Love it.

How long have you been in Paris? About two two and a half years now really like it. That's one of the nice things about working guy our bleeds for you Nathan James talks location.

I thought it is someone's got to do it though. Is that with the lake the canonical smart home kind of group is based is Yeah, so canonical people may not be very familiar with canonical. We're the company behind Ubuntu and we're a very distributed company we grow from those open source Community Roots.

So we've got people really all over the world. The product management group is kind of centered in the European time zones. That's how we work together better that way, but I wouldn't say there's really necessarily a geographical center to the company other than a concentration in North America and Europe.

Of course, that's where a lot of telling comes from. Yeah. Very cool.

Technical so I I think most of our audience Nathan knows Ubuntu they know canonical the company behind them boom 2 and they know you know Linux is is a very distributed. Yeah platform, right? It's in everything TVs appliances, but I don't know if they really got the or under grass the The reach let's say of the whole Smart Home.

Right. Yes canonicals role in the smart home industry. Yeah, I mean give us A lot of people don't realize they're using Linux in their daily lives.

I mean Linux is really pervasive in the world. We live in today and that canonical. We we put Linux in the entire compute Spectrum right from the cloud to the edge all the way out to iot kind of endpoint type devices and my mission economical as part of this iot product management group is to bring some of the lessons we've learned from our presence in iot.

We've got a pretty strong presence in sectors, like industrial robotics these kinds of sectors and bringing some of those lessons we've learned more to that consumer space that I think could really benefit from some of those lessons we've learned and and some of the capabilities we've built up there. Excellent actually, all right, you you know what before we jump in? To some recent developments on this for people who maybe want to get more of an idea of canonical smart home involvement and and all the great things you guys are involved in there.

Where would you send them? com is our homepage and we've got a smart home page in the iot section there. That would be a great place to get started.

We talk about some of those advantages of our iot products there like a bunch of core the snaps store this Technologies and also talk about you know, how we're now a member of the connectivity standards Alliance. We're supporters of the matter protocol, which is something maybe we can get into later but the matters standard rather. com is a great place to get started.

Sure. Maybe we could grab that link to we'll try to put it in the notes up on texture on TV. Yeah.

Well help everyone watching it, you know live on Tech strong TV or wherever they're watching this YouTube or LinkedIn Facebook inside you but if you go to On that TV will have show notes and we'll have the link for it. So let's jump into it Nathan. Do I think we got a good background going on?

What what what's new what's new with Ubuntu well with canonical and Smart Home. Yeah, so one thing that we're seeing changing in the Smart Home Market is a shift towards being much more conscious about security. It's been a weak spot for the industry for a really long time.

The smart home industry is a space with some really thin margins and companies really haven't been willing to invest in security because it is an investment but we're now seeing that with all the data that our Smart Homes collect and modern smart home right has a cameras and microphones everywhere machine learning algorithms learning your habits, you know, this is really sensitive data that we have now and consumers are more aware of it and Regulators are more aware of this. So we're seeing an increase in consumers demanding security and Regulators stepping in to mandate security. So there's already security labeling required and several countries across Europe and Asia the US actually has a security iot Security labeling act or the White House is working on a labeling program for iot devices.

Actually I've got Some smart home devices here. You can see they've got this the energy label on them. It's going to be something similar to that to help consumers understand how secure a devices right and that that's going to include things like a regular security updates.

How often is this device getting updated? What's the anticipated lifespan of the device and then some really basic things which believe it or not normally haven't been checked off the list like not using default passwords for some of the software on the device things like that or gonna be encapsulated and that security label which is gonna help to Consumer better understand. All right, is this device on buying actually secure or not?

And I think canonical is well positioned to help companies meet some of these standards and and create devices that are more secure while still being competitive in this really competitive industry, right? absolutely, so You know, it's funny. First of all, I got to commend you for coming out and saying hey.

As in Industry, we haven't been as diligent about security as we need to be. I think that's long overdue, right? You know, I'm reminded.

I I did a interview 15 years ago probably 12 years ago with the CEO of mongodb and couch based and I asked them. There's no SQL me no security because it doesn't seem like security is very important to you folks. This is a long time ago.

And they both you know what they said. They said we'll worry about security when our customers worry about security. And I think it's the same thing in smart home kind of stuff.

Yeah, right. People are more with. Wow.

I want I want my app to work. I want to make it easy for me to use right. I want my app on my phone.

I want to be able to control it. Don't start giving me hard pass words or two-factor authentication or or any of these other things don't get in my way. I just wanted to use but after a while I think people realize the the You know the repercussions of what have if someone got a hold of I mean, I forget your refrigerator but of your thermostats or of anything else kind of you know, that's in these today's Smart Homes.

Yeah. no, I think he's that's very true that yeah, unless unless the consumer drives that it's really hard for companies and industries to sort of self regulate that I mean, there's there's a few examples of that maybe but there are few and far between but I think one good step forward. This industry is taking actually recently has been the matter standard.

So those who aren't familiar. That's an interoperability standard that allows smart device smart home device to work with any of the major platforms out there. So work with Google it'll work with Amazon Alexa.

It'll work with apple home kids Samsung SmartThings the list goes on and a huge number of Manufacturers device manufacturers have bought into that canonicals a part of the connectivity standards Alliance as well because it really speaks to our values of openness and also security right? So actually it's less known for this but Security is an integral part of the matter standard, which I think is really great step for for the industry. And I think that's also part of why it pairs.

So well with Ubuntu core our iot centered operating system, right security is at the core of that OS and it was built from the ground up for the iot. So running that secure standard on top of that really secure OS just gives you the perfect combination for building out the you know, let's say that the Gateway, you know modem Wi-Fi router of of the future smart home, right? Absolutely, you know and I think that's a great point, right?

When You're Building smart home apps and Technology on a on a base of a secure Linux operating system in this case Ubuntu This makes it a hell of a lot easier, right because you you start from a secure place and unless you're gonna go off the rails, right and do not standard kind of thing. You should stay out there. You know what?

So you mentioned the matter. Standard and I don't know if you want to call the Consortium from ubuntu's point of view. What is it take?

To really make, you know, put some teeth in that to really make that the standard. Yes, so I think there's this idea of critical mass that is really important here. And I think and I hope that the matters standard is Achieve that because there's enough buy-in now that the companies who aren't bought into the standard risk being the ones left on the outside, right?

And I think there's still a risk of of companies trying to develop their own walled Gardens, you know, well this works on that or but if you use it and are ecosystem. Then you get this extra functionality those types of things that I can be tempting maybe from a commercial standpoint. I think there's there's a risk of that still but I think it's a big step forward that we already have that critical mass in the standard.

So yeah. No, it's a matter of maybe an unintended of waiting and seeing you know, so these verse generation of devices hit the market and seeing it. It's that really sticks and the momentum continues It'll be interesting to see.

You know one of the other things anything you mentioned earlier, right? It's hard for an industry to self-regulate itself. Right?

Right. We see it in banking right this past week. You know, they wanted to deregulate some of the smaller banks that we wound up with a banker on here.

Right, right. So you're in Paris the EU has? been much more forth with in terms of saying hey.

Well, we'll regulate this right? Well, we'll tell you what to do. We're gonna put in.

minimums that that you need to to comply with and you know the US is well the US is catching up but traditionally has taken the route of hey if you police yourself better to police yourself then have us police you Yeah. you know, I wonder which is the right system or is it a sort of a hybrid if you will and the other thing, you know Smart Homes is such a global. a global industry a global kind of Marketplace Now can anyone EU or the us or China or anyone kind of dictate?

To the whole industry like that. Yeah, those are great questions. So for the first one, you know, whether you know regulation or not is better.

I think it really comes down to the perspective of the consumer, right because regulation can be really good for the consumer and some of the things we were talking about like having a label on a device that makes it easy to understand if it's secure or not. That's a really big step forward for a consumer regulation can also box out new entrance to the space. Right?

So the more regulated and Industry the harder it is for a new company to enter that industry. I don't think we're anywhere near that point in smart home yet. I think more regulation is still a good thing for us, but it is a balance I think at the end of the day.

And then in terms of setting the standard, I think you're right that Europe has as led in terms of regulation in that space, but we've certainly seen some regulation catching up elsewhere. I think Singapore was the first country to actually impose this security labeling on devices and actually California and Oregon to name a few states in the US have already introduced their own legislation. And we do tend to see California be a leader in the US and internationally in terms of imposing their own set of rules and usually manufacturers will have to keep up with California's rules and then applied and globally otherwise list risk losing a huge Market in the US, right?

So it could be that Europe or certain states can impose those rules. But as you mentioned China is a huge growing Market, I doubt that, you know, the whims of California would reach quite that far. So, you know, we'll see how that develops but really interesting question.

Thanks. Yep. Hey, we're almost at a time.

But you know what look for for our folks watching this. Here's the important thing. Security is important.

To Nathan and Ubuntu in their Smart Home Products, and it's and it's important to other Smart Home. a manufacturers as well this matter Symbol is kind of the Good Housekeeping feel right or for products that have been, you know designed with the security in mind. So it's important you should be looking for that when you're looking at your Smart Home Products.

You know, it's so hard. They think because we're looking at devices and we want to make sure it has this feature that feature this feature. Oh and what about the security?

So the the matter label matters? Anything else you want to? Answer.

Yeah, check out our website and if you're technically minded we've released some snaps for those who aren't familiar. Those are kind of app packages in the Ubuntu Universe particularly great for iot. We've released some snaps to help you start experimenting with matter.

You'll be able to find those on our website and on our blog so check them out. very cool and thank you. Thank you for coming on Nathan.

It's probably afternoon out there in Paris. So have a great rest of your day and come on keep us posted about what's going on. Will do.

Thank you very much. Have a good one, right Nathan Hart product manager for Smart Homes at Ubuntu here on techstrong TV. We're going to take a break.

We'll be right back.