With the pace that the technology is growing, we will soon have connected devices everywhere in our daily lives. It requires an integration of a number of hardware and software skills. But there are still technical challenges that are faced on a daily basis by the developers behind IoT. Here are the top 6 challenges that IoT developers face.

1. Connectivity issues

IoT is about connecting many devices and connecting a lot of devices is a huge challenge. It will disobey the current communication technology in a lot of ways. As the number of connected devices increase, they will demand an investment in cloud servers to handle this large data. The entire system can go down if the server becomes unavailable.

A solution to this problem is using fog computing models and allow the time-critical and cloud servers taken care of by IoT hubs or use devices to identify and authenticate each other directly and exchange information without any broker being involved.

2. Security issues

IoT brings in a lot of security issues because of a number of software systems being involved, it is easier to hack the systems. As IoT grows even bigger, this problem is bound to rise. This is one of the biggest challenges that IoT developers have to deal with. The internet will provide malicious actors with innumerable attack vectors and possibilities to carry out their evil deeds, especially since a considerable number of them suffer from security holes. Scalability is another factor that leads to IoT being insecure. They often lack computational power and storage capacity to deploy the powerful solutions that they deploy and hence find in trouble.

3. Privacy issues

As IoT devices are susceptible to security threat, developers certainly have privacy issues. The information needs to be protected and that is a difficult task. Many data collected by IoT is sensitive and personal and is supposed to be protected. But precautions must be taken when storing and sharing the data. Data generated by a device might not be personal or sensitive but when combined with data from other devices, it could turn out to be personal and hence harmful if not protected. In many cases, criminals don’t even need to pry into your encrypted communications in order to obtain the information they want. Vendors and manufacturers must either discard this data or remove the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) to make sure that consumers aren’t damaged in case of data breaches.

4. Integration with IoT Platforms

It is important for developers to identify which are the right IoT platform for the IoT products in hand. It is important to identify the right IoT platform. Improper integration could lead to abnormalities in IoT products. This is a very difficult challenge to overcome because there are many IoT asserts that need to be connected to get the sensor data and transmit it to the IoT platform.

5. Deciding on the Right IoT Platform

IoT platforms offer a combination of tools to bring the physical objects online. The platform market is big and confusing, so make sure you choose wisely. The platform should ensure security, scalability and usability. The various parameters of hardware and software involving IoT should fit together and work seamlessly in an IoT ecosystem. Concerned organizations should form open standards and architecture models for a cross-platform deployment for the IoT to make use of them.

6. Operating System Considerations

IoT devices are much less powerful compared to traditional desktops. It is important to also consider what operating system will the system run on based on parameters of the IoT product. It should both fit the capabilities of the device and the requirements for its functionality. Linux is mostly preferred by developers for IoT microcontrollers, constrained devices and gateways.