[Cross-post from Medium https://medium.com/misinfosec/at-truth-trust-online-someone-asked-me-about-the-overlaps-between-misinformation-research-and-iot-a69772aba963]
At Truth&Trust Online, someone asked me about the overlaps between misinformation research and IoT security. There’s more than you’d think, and not just in the overlaps between people like Chris Blask who are working on both problem sets.
I stopped for a second, then went “Oh. I recognize this problem. It’s exactly what we did with data and information fusion (and knowledge fusion too, but you know a lot of that now as just normal data science and AI). Basically it’s about what happens when you’re building situation pictures (mental models of what is happening in the world) based on data that’s come from people (the misinformation, or information fusion part) and things (the IoT, or data fusion part). And what we basically did last time was run both disciplines separately – the text analysis and reasoning in a different silo to the sensor-based analysis and reasoning – til it made sense to start combining them (which is basically what became information fusion). That’s how we got the *last* pyramid diagram – the DIKW model of data under information under knowledge under wisdom (sorry: it’s been changed to insight now), and similar ideas of transformations and transitions in information (in the Shannon information theory sense of the word) between layers.
We’ll probably do a similar thing now. Both disciplines feed into situation pictures; both can be used to support (or refute) each other. Both contain all the classics like protecting information CIA: confidentiality, integrity, accessibility. I tasked two people at the conference to start delving into this area further (and connect to Chris) – will see where this goes.