In 1996, the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act (HIPAA) was passed in the United
States. It addresses concerns about sensitivity of healthcare
information and the lack of security in place for that
data. HIPAA restricts how healthcare information can be
transferred and analyzed. The challenge is in transferring
PGHD securely within the boundaries that HIPAA necessitates.
Published reports show that an estimated 40 percent
of IoT sensors will be PGHD devices, so this is going
to become an industry-wide challenge very quickly.1
Industrial/Manufacturing
The industrial automation space has been collecting and
analyzing data for decades. This data has historically been
processed in centralized data centers, which in some cases
can be in a location quite some distance from the factory
floor. Many newer industrial automation applications
require real-time or near real-time interaction with compute
resources. Due to this requirement, many factories
are moving the compute resources closer to the factory
floor or on the factory floor. This opens up a whole other
realm of issues when data center servers and networking
equipment are exposed to the harsh environments of the
32 I ICT TODAY
It is imperative to understand
the installation space because
one size does not fit all when
it comes to enclosures.
factory floor. Contamination from water, dust, and
corrosives become potential hazards. Harsh environment
enclosures, equipment, and physical infrastructure are
required to properly address these issues (Figure 4).
Retail
The brick and mortar retail space has been under assault
from online retailers for quite some time. To counteract
this assault, brick and mortar retailers are always searching
FIGURE 4: Many industrial automation applications require real-time or near real-time interaction with compute resources.