I wrote about transparent data transfer control APIs at the IoT device level the other day, so it made me happy to come across Dowse, an on/off switch for home devices while monitoring things today. This Internet of Things privacy and control device sounds like something that should be present in every home and business network. 

I am still learning about it, but here is a short description from the post by WaaG, that I think describes it well:

The Dowse box gives you back control. Dowse is free and open source software. There is no big company behind it. By installing the Dowse box you will get insight down to the network layer of what is actually going on in your home. Who is talking to who, what, where and when? You can see which device connects to which company and you can turn that communication off. Or allow it.

This reflects the transparency I would like to see at the network level for every home and business. With the recent wave of IoT-launched DDOS attacks we are going to need more discoverability, awareness, transparency, and control at the home and business and home network and Universal Plug and Play level.

I'm not sure saying the Dowse box is the solution, but it provides us with one possible blueprint, similar to what I was talking about in my post on transparent data transfer control. In this IoT age, we are going to need device awareness to be a default, and transparency about which devices are talking to the Internet, when and what data they are transferring, and possibly even more security auditing and observability solutions.

It seems like the Dowse box concept should be baked into all home and business networking. I am well aware that a version of this does exist at the network administration level for most modern networking solutions, but I'm talking about the next generation, end-user friendly, mobile edition that makes devices monitoring, awareness, and control dead simple for anyone.

Of course, this layer would have an API to allow for the extending, and customizing of all of this. Now that I am coming across examples of this type of control at the IoT network level, I will keep scratching, and I'm confident I'll find other examples. Maybe enough that I add a section to my Internet of Things and APIs research.