Perhaps you remember the trendy word Popsnöre, used to describe a sort of fashionable pop enthusiast. Originally it referred to someone more interested in surface and trends than in substance. A Popsnöre followed the latest fads in pop music without necessarily caring about the deeper aspects of culture or art.
Trends have shifted, and if the word pops up on a vocabulary section of an exam today, I’m convinced few would guess its meaning. Most people likely don’t know the term and might assume it’s the name of a candy created by an owner with little context—or perhaps a product name dreamed up by an AI-assisted marketing team racing a tight deadline.
Speaking of AI, I recently reviewed current trends in IoT and my top three are sustainability, security, and, of course, AI meeting IoT. AI thrives on data and IoT generates massive amounts of it, so the synergy is obvious. But for a moment let’s set aside the IoT industry and sustainability and focus on my two top trends: security and AI. Looking back at 2024, there are clear examples of how things can go badly wrong in both areas.
Old networks create new threats
On the topic of security: on October 13 there was an attempted break-in at a water reservoir in Bollnäs. Shortly after, an emergency public warning (VMA) was issued advising that the water was not fit for consumption. Attacks like this may become more frequent, and the importance of keeping systems properly maintained cannot be overstated. It’s troubling that Helsingevatten’s CEO, Ylva Jedebäck Lindberg, explained that after the shutdown of 2G and 3G networks, their surveillance cameras no longer functioned as intended. They hadn’t found time to address the issue. Personally, I doubt GSM alone would have supported those cameras, so it seems the 3G shutdown caused the outage, and its end-of-life was imminent. The network phase-out was not a surprise and had been known in advance. I genuinely feel for them and hope this serves as a wake-up call for others.
If you work in an organization covered by the NIS2 directive, you face requirements for both cybersecurity and physical protection of critical infrastructure, including water reservoirs and supply systems. Since the water sector is classified as an “essential sector” under the directive, water facilities must secure operations against both physical and cyber threats. The NIS2 directive came into force for EU member states on October 18, 2024, and member states were expected to have transposed it into national law. Known but unaddressed security weaknesses can be interpreted as non-compliance under NIS2. My practical advice: do not base any part of your operations on GSM or 3G networks. Replace those systems immediately. Helsingevatten survived by a few days’ margin before NIS2 enforcement, but now compliance is mandatory for all affected entities.
GPT bloopers as AI takes center stage
Turning to my top trend number one, AI—an area somewhat more “popsnöre” than security—there are countless amusing stories around AI. Usually it’s a GPT model making a comedic mistake rather than “AI” as a whole. One early “aha” moment for me came when I tested ChatGPT on LPWAN topics and then asked “give me the latest answer again” in the same chat. Instead of repeating the LPWAN answer, the model returned a blog post about online poker—something I’d never asked about, never tested, and had not discussed. It had pulled the latest reply from a different conversation. I don’t mean to dismiss ChatGPT and its siblings—they’re useful tools in many contexts—but they shouldn’t be allowed to fully take over writing tasks without oversight, and in their early days privacy and security were sometimes questionable, as this example shows. I also notice colleagues in the industry who use these tools but maintain inadequate quality controls for AI-generated text. One amusing instance replaced technical terms like network port speed and upload speed with nonsensical phrases such as “hopping stilts” and “photo gloves” in a product description for a router.
“Quick and wrong” is a concept older than popsnére, but rushing—or conversely, delaying needed upgrades—has real consequences. The technical migration from GSM/3G to modern networks illustrates that poorly timed transitions and insufficient planning lead to avoidable failures. When it comes to critical systems, prudent timing and thorough implementation matter: what happened to the idea that “moderation is best”?