The idea of the Nest Thermostat is that it not only allows you to control it from anywhere, but it also learns your temperature habits: do you like the house cooler at night? Do you turn the temperature up before you leave to save energy? This thermostat partners with you to learn all these peculiarities and then do them autonomously.
The Nest is only one of the devices that is part of a phenomenon known as the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT is the interconnection of physical items through the Internet; although that is oversimplifying it. The IoT has in fact meant many things to many people: to some just a buzzword used for business purposes, and to others a reformation of life as we know it. Regardless, products like the Nest, the GlowCap (which tracks your pills for you), and Internet Refrigerators (which track your groceries) are all a testament to an unquestionable change in the way we interact with day-to-day objects.
The number one issue people take with this idea is predictably its impact on privacy. For example, what happens when your lightbulb gives away your WiFi password? And while the popularity of a technology may reduce the distrust of it (as seen in credit cards), businesses and governments do well to require a security backbone before they opt in.
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My name is Carlos Lemus. I am the lead for the brand-new IoT lab at the Auburn Cyber Research Center where our main focus is cybersecurity. By performing cutting-edge, state-of-the-art research, we hope to provide society a means to trustfully make use of the latest in human advancement. Here I will tell you about some of our progress.
Carlos Coding 
