There are various cases when you need to disconnect a specific device from your IoT system. An attacker might have compromised that device. Maybe the device started behaving strangely and you want to isolate it until you investigate. Or perhaps your customer stopped paying and you need to suspend service until they clear the debt. Here’s the thing: disconnecting a device from AWS IoT Core is not as simple as one might think.

Here’s the thing - I didn’t plan to become a full-stack IoT developer. It just happened, one AWS service at a time, one project at a time, one challenge at a time… It Started with AWS IoT Solutions My journey began with designing and building AWS IoT solutions for real-world deployments. I wasn’t just reading documentation - I was experimenting, connecting thousands of devices to the cloud, managing their lifecycle, and ensuring secure communication at scale.

You just finished testing your IoT device. Time to clean up. You navigate to AWS IoT Console, find your Thing under Manage → All devices → Things, and hit delete. Done, right? Wrong. Here’s the thing: deleting an IoT Thing only removes the logical representation of your device. The certificate (your device’s proof of identity) remains active with policies attached. That’s a security hole. What Actually Happens When you delete a Thing in the AWS console, you’ll see a helpful summary of related resources.

You Can’t Code Your Way to Adoption I recently had a chat with Val Jelinic, a senior leader in digital transformation with over 30 years of experience, on something that most technology companies get wrong: the belief that digital transformation is primarily about technology. Val’s perspective is clear and, frankly, uncomfortable for those of us who love building solutions: “Technology on its own doesn’t guarantee success. The real transformation happens when people understand it, people adopt it, and they make it part of how they work every day.

My customers often analyze the potential of employing custom IoT solutions for businesses. The decision to invest in building them is not a simple one. It requires careful consideration of short-term, mid-term, and long-term aspects and operational capital management. Short-term Reasoning In the short-term, investing in custom IoT solutions may not be the most cost-effective approach. The upfront investment required to develop a custom solution can be substantial, and the benefits may not be immediately apparent.

Today, I’d like to share my thoughts on a topic that is crucial for any IoT project: codifying domain knowledge. When it comes to IoT, the ability to quickly and accurately translate human experience into software (often called “codifying domain knowledge”) is essential. It’s important to approach this task with care, but also with a sense of urgency. Based on my experience, starting quick-and-dirty reduces the risk of failure and leads to the best results.