Matthew Ward – Midleton College, Cork
Hello, I’m Matthew, and I was part of the CONFIRM course in 2021. I’m from Cork and go to Midleton College.
I signed up for this course because I am personally fascinated by robotics and automation, and am considering a career in the field. My favourite part of the week has been the various discussions about robotics, AI and automation, and if it wasn’t for the pandemic I surely would have enjoyed the practical robotics as well.
As part of the course, I made a poster on the internet of things. The Internet of things is the network of interconnected objects that are all connected to the internet. This includes smart speakers, Alexa, smart locks, smart lights and many more devices all unified by their usage of the web. As part of my research, I performed a survey on course participants. While not enough of a sample size to make any definitive conclusions, the survey data was unexpected to say the least. Despite evidence that over 87% of smart home devices contain severe security flaws that have not been patched, and all participants surveyed having an interest in their cybersecurity(albeit to varying degrees), 9 out of the 14 had smart devices, with the most common being smart speakers, Alexa and Fitbits. On the bright side, Alexa and Fitbits are more likely to be updated than most other smart devices, increasing their security.
Thank you for reading this, and I hope you too will enjoy the course.
