Knowledge@Wharton: You’re the associate director of the Cyber-Physical Systems Program, which is part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. What is that?

Sokwoo Rhee: Cyber-Physical Systems is pretty simple, actually. Cyber means connectivity, Internet and software. Physical means sensors, actuators, anything you can touch — cars, chips, radios, etc. So when you combine anything with a networking software component with anything that is physical — those are cyber-physical systems. That’s really what the Internet of things is about. There’s a slight difference between CPS, that’s what it’s called, cyber-physical systems, and IoT. CPS puts a little more emphasis on security issues, and risk management issues and robustness and reliability issues. That’s really the only difference — generally, it proves the same.