As we moved towards touchscreen phones with ultra-smart features, we also reduced the lifetime of our mobile phones. A case that comes to mind from personal experience is a phone bought in 2004 that was still functioning in 2014, and was decommissioned only when a different phone was bought.

DC motors are widely used in different machines, mechanisms and motion controls in manufacturing and processing industries. In these machines, it is often required to control speed, direction and the number of rotations of the motor. Some applications require only motor speed control, some only rotation control and some only direction control. Many applications require control of two or all three parameters.

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), a subset of the IoT evolution, is quite the rage within automation companies as they seek to add a high-margin software component to their traditional businesses. Since Maxim Integrated chips are used to build these automation systems, they get a unique perspective on how automation system design has to evolve or, in some cases, change as companies attempt to put their automation systems online to take advantage of the IIoT. This article briefly introduces the IIoT and focuses on the security challenges in IIoT that must be solved to implement secure IIoT-capable end systems.