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I can see advantages to collating data for both organizations, but to it just raises the question, once again, of why simple appliances are connected to the Internet.

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by red_admiral6 hours ago|

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That, and why there's not a company VPN in between.

by jandrewrogers5 hours ago|

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These industrial networks are often not internal to a single company, sometimes by necessity. They also are often installed in places with inherent connectivity difficulties, so sometimes you are bridging weird networks that limit what is possible just to get the signal out.

These aren't consumer fridges with wifi. The situation on the ground is significantly more complex. There are a lot of embedded sensors and control systems in supply chains in order to minimize waste.

by vkou6 hours ago|

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Because a main user of this is the third-party HVAC contractor, and there's a operational cost to getting him set up on the grocer's VPN. (He has thousands of clients, that's in aggregate a lot of customers that would need to give him VPN access. He will do whatever the client asks of him, but he will bill accordingly.)

by vkou6 hours ago|

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1. There's nothing simple about a commercial HVAC install, especially across a national chain.

2. Because they think (rightly or wrongly) that the benefits of monitoring and ease of maintenance and their contractor having direct access to the data outweigh the risks.

3. They think it outweighs the risk because IOT has been socially normalized, creating the wide perception that no, it's not that bad.

They almost certainly have insurance for this kind of event, and their insurer will almost certainly think real hard about the pros/cons of this, and will adjust rates accordingly. The grocer is free to take those rates into account when deciding on whether their next store will have an IOT HVAC.