Last updated: 19 March 2014
Can we use technology to change our lives for the better? Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam thinks so, and he thinks the answer is “as close as the phone in your pockets.” This is only one of the tidbits from McAdam’s keynote presentation at CES 2013 earlier this week. The keynote was short on new product announcements but big on vision. The vision for Verizon, according to McAdam, is to enable a “seamless connected lifestyle” for consumers, bringing wireless access way beyond mobile devices and solving our world’s big challenges.
McAdam said that by 2020, the “internet of things” will represent 30 billion connected things – including appliances and electronics. How can these things solve our challenges? During the keynote he highlighted several ways technology is being used to enhance our lives, including by the NFL, by Ford, and in the medical community. Maybe the coolest example noted in the keynote was something called Golden-I. It powers devices like iPads to help firefighters respond to emergencies, giving them access to building schematics, firefighter biometrics, and infrared sensors to detect movement within a smoky fire.
The Verizon CEO concluded his keynote by saying “I believe we’re at a tipping point to use this technology to address life’s big challenges. We just need the creativity and innovation to put that all together.”
It’s not new to us here to think about all of the ways we can improve our lives and the way we do business by utilizing the technology and fast networks available to us. It’s on our minds here all the time – we are, of course, a digital security company that develops solutions that aims to make peoples’ digital lives seamless, convenient and secure. Though “secure” is the last adjective in that sentence, it is the most important.
Our increasingly connected society requires increasing levels of security. I realize this isn’t a foreign concept or a big profound statement, but amongst so many exciting innovations and visions here at CES, I feel the need to stress it. We need to be creative and innovative to create technologies that will solve our world’s challenges, but we can’t forget security. When you really think about it, security is a one of these challenges itself. So, let’s truly address all of our lives’ challenges, and ensure that connected devices and technologies are implemented in a secure way to keep us, our homes, and our businesses protected.
