Technology in the Background – Invisible Ambient Intelligence – AVANTEC

About the job

While reading the Gartner article "The 10 Most Important Strategic Technology Trends from Gartner for 2025", trend 5 "Invisible Ambient Intelligence" caught my interest. My imagination was sparked and initial ideas of what this could be took shape in my mind. What is invisible ambient intelligence? Am I imagining it correctly? Do I understand it properly? What risks does it entail and can anything be done about it? My journey of discovery begins... First, I informed myself about what is meant by the term "invisible ambient intelligence", and my castle in the air of ideas around ambient intelligence quickly dissipated. Invisible ambient intelligence refers to the use of technologies integrated into the environment that interactively engage with users, capturing, processing, and transmitting information. With artificial intelligence and machine learning, needs can be recognised in real time and responded to without the user having to intervene actively. It already sounds a bit like The Matrix (Red or Blue Pill), but invisible ambient intelligence is already widespread and in use for smart homes, industry, logistics, or smart cities, where traffic flows are optimised with this technology without the participants really noticing. My security concerns grow... With the emergence and development of new technologies, not only new positive possibilities are opened up, but at the same time new risks are created. Take the example of the smart city mentioned earlier. For the system to react to pedestrians, drivers, and all other traffic participants, they must of course be continuously recorded – which already raises my first data protection concerns. Who guarantees the secure storage, management, deletion of data, and protection against misuse? Moving on to security: Who does not know the scene from the film "Italian Job", where the traffic control centre only displays the phrase "You’ll never shut down the real Napster" on the screens? Yes, of course, it is just a film, one tells oneself, but this scene symbolises hacking and cyber-attacks. It is not only hacking and cyber-attacks that pose a potential security risk. The use of new technologies without already implemented security standards can create security vulnerabilities. These new technologies can go even further. For these systems to function, they rely on automatic decision-making. This, along with the collection and use of personalised data, could now be used to deliberately manipulate people’s behaviour. Returning to the example of the smart city. Here, drivers or pedestrians could be deliberately guided by green traffic lights so that they pass advertising billboards and are unconsciously influenced. Besides these three security concerns, there are many others, such as loss of control, ethical implications, or legal and regulatory challenges, to name a few. My desire for protective measures grows... As I become increasingly aware of the risks, the question arises more and more: "What can be done about it?" To find an answer, I use the simplest option and ask ChatGPT, which of course replies in a nice flowing text with bullet points: Data protection and security Security of IoT devices Access controls and authentication Monitoring and anomaly detection Security updates and patch management Network segmentation Security policies and regulations Cloud infrastructure security User training and awareness Response and recovery plans With the concluding sentence that organisations can minimise risks and safely harness the benefits of technology by employing modern security strategies such as encryption, access control, monitoring, and cloud security. Time for a conclusion... Invisible ambient intelligence, with its advantages and disadvantages, is already increasingly used today in business, warehouses, retail, and logistics. It shows that even with this technology trend, security strategies such as hardening, network segmentation, access controls, and authentication remain proven and important approaches to minimise risks and attack vectors. Deep in the back of my mind, the question remains: Was I also manipulated during the search for protective measures? Links and bibliography IoT, IIoT, OT – everything is networked – Tec-Bite IT-Security Blog IoT – how to deal with security risks? – Tec-Bite IoT Security: Protecting my smart dental floss – Tec-Bite IT-Security Blog Zero Trust Cellular Connectivity – the next step to control IoT traffic – Tec-Bite The article Technology in the Background – Invisible Ambient Intelligence first appeared on Tec-Bite.