'Internet of Things' Takes SXSW By Storm & The Web Turns 25: Weekly Roundup

The Internet of Things took center stage this week at South by Southwest (March 7 - 11 in Austin, Texas), the annual confab for all things music, film and tech. The slew of connected, "smart" devices remind us how far the Internet's come since its humble beginnings 25 years ago this week. But it begs the question: Where will all this wearable and mobile data get stored? Here's a look at what the experts have to say about that, and other IT challenges, in an increasingly data-driven world:

What Can Go Wrong If Your MSP Data Isn’t Secure

A webinar hosted by the MSPAlliance, an association of cloud service providers, brought to light the vulnerabilities faced by MSPs. Included were data loss and breaches, BYOD — and the significant associated costs of each. With compliance regulations and the patchwork of state data breach notification laws, it's imperative that MSPs have policies to protect their own data — and their customers' data. 

Read more at SearchITChannel

Preparing for the Data Deluge from the 'Internet of Things' 

Gartner predicts the Internet of Things will unlock more than $1.9 trillion — yes, trillion — in economic value during the next six years. Add to that Cisco's prediction that there will be 50 billion connected devices worldwide by 2020, and you're left with a staggering amount of data that will pass through data centers worldwide. CIOs will need to ensure that their data centers are ready for the coming demand.

Read more at Wired

Healthcare Tech's Data Renaissance

Healthcare is one industry the Internet of Things is posed to take by storm. The industry is primed for disruption or, as Dr. Leslie Saxon, a cardiologist at University of Southern California's Center for Body Computing puts it USA Today, the healthcare industry right now "is where the music industry was with the vinyl LP." What could that innovation look like? Think devices the size of a grain of sand implanted under a patient's skin to monitor drug dosage, vital signs and more — all of which will produce an incredible amount of sensitive data that IT will need to store and secure. 

Read more at USA Today 

4. The Internet Turns 25!

The Internet turned 25 years old this week, marketing a quarter-century of cat videos, Internet memes and the Information Age. To celebrate the occasion, the Pew Research Center issued a report on the Internet's affect on how Americans work and play. Here are a few interesting stats: 

• In 1995, 14 percent of Americans used the Internet, compared with 87 percent today.
• 53 percent of Americans say the Internet would be “very hard” to give up
• 61 percent of Americans say that the Internet is essential to their livelihood. 

Read more at Pew