1.

What are the opportunities for General Electric considering the

new technological developments?
The opportunities for GE new technological development are everywhere
so the strategy should be diversification. Nowadays more and more
processes are included under the idea of internet of things, everything
from home appliances to sensors mounted on cows (eCow from Telekom)
or drones Some of the categories that GE could have an impact on are:
Inventory management this allows the constant monitoring and
distribution of products in segments such as retail, production, warehouses
and hospitals. Management provided by IoT solutions helps streamline
inventory reducing the amount of products stored in warehouses and at
the same time to automate all or partial ordering process.
Staff productivity can be improved by training both in the area through
the implementation of sensors for measuring the degree of attention,
identifying the type of learning, and performance management.
Other activities to optimize operations can be facilitated through
remote monitoring and tracking equipment and machinery adjustment
based on the data occurred through the monitoring systems.
Energy management is facilitated through the use of sensors and
meters for energy consumption, but also meant algorithms to estimate the
number of persons in a room depending on the heat produced by them
and adjusting light, temperature and ventilation depending on the data. An
example of good practice in this area, is the only building energy
independent in Romania developed by MB Telecom who now serves as
their post office.
Some long term applications are:
Health Management became even now a major component in the
mass IoT applications. This type of solution can be found in phones as
sensors, applications specially developed for tracking exercise, but also
the device's specialized wearable type which are often as watches or
bracelets. If the data would be centralized, those could have major
implications on the processes conducted by doctors.
Environmental management is a major problem and is becoming
more visible due to media and initiative groups. Using IoT environmental
protection this could become one of many highly profitable applications
with high growth potential. This also requires in most cases the use of
sensors for measuring the air pollution and based on the data
municipalities and NGOs can take action in time to restore it to the normal
limits .
Safety and security is an area that proves the potential of IoT by
conducting major project developments in central and office areas , here

we speak about smart surveillance systems and sensors for safety

perimeters, and sensors for identifying gas or harmful substances in
manufacturing processes and beyond.
Product development Using IoT type of systems, research and
development processes is an important starting point in developing new
products, this is facilitated by the use of sensors in the process of
monitoring real life situations in which the products should offer a better fit
to the needs of the consumer.
Autonomous vehicles become common elements in agriculture,
manufacturing and the automotive industry, this area experienced a
steady increase in popularity especially in areas where productivity is a
major problem. The most common example and already available on the
market are autonomous agricultural machines and Tesla cars, both of
which are already affordable and significantly reduce personnel or use
costs.
In a society that will become increasingly technological, we have to start
talking about large volumes of data to be processed and interpreted. If this
data ends up being acted upon, they have the ability to provide important
information not only for the area from which they were collected but also
for areas with similar conditions. For these reasons the know-how
generated based on data collection will become an easy product to sell,
data becoming a commodity. By being highly diversified in various field
and in different geographical areas, GE has the potential to become one of
the most important data/information providers, all those by offering both
he hardware and the software components in each of the above
mentioned sectors.
2. Where is General Electric vulnerable? What are the threats that
GE must beware?
The threats and vulnerabilities that General Electric must take into account
especially if it is moving more towards big data can be categorised in 4
groups based on the moment and place where it might happen.
1. Legal This can include anything from Abuse of personal data to
the unauthorized use of Intellectual Propriety protected resources.
By being highly implemented, such a service might have access to a
lot of information that can lead to vital information about the secret
processes conducted by the companies in which it is implemented.
2. Abuse - Depending if the abuse is taking place in the company or
are the clients premises the information and sensors can be
tempered with in cases of unauthorized manipulation of hardware
and software, generations and use of rogue certificates, usage of
unauthorized or third party hardware components.
3. Interception/loss of information because we are talking about
data, one of the major threats is the interception of data by
unauthorized parties This can lead to the destruction of data,
leakage of data via unsecured APIs or improperly implementation of

future development of the infrastructure, all of those can lead major

financial problems for the company
4. Organisational - in this section the most important problem might
be the skill shortage, nowadays, because of the high volume of data,
even in the emerging countries, companies from various fields are
trying to hire and train data annalists and architects so that they can
manage this kind of platforms but talent is hard to be found.