Smart Textile Industry: Threats and Opportunities

Smart textiles, also known as e-textiles or electronic textiles, are fabrics that integrate sensors, actuators, and communication devices, to create new functionalities. These are used in a variety of applications, from sports, entertainment, and fitness, to healthcare, safety, and military mission critical applications. The integration of Industry 4.0 and smart textiles can lead to significant advances in manufacturing and product development. Smart textiles can enable new product functionalities, such as monitoring of vital signs or biometric data, and provide valuable insights into the collected information. While the integration of Industry 4.0 and smart textiles represents a significant opportunity for innovation and growth in various domains, it comes with some tricky security challenges. Thus, there is an urgent need for the development of new skill sets among stakeholders. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges encountered in the context of smart textiles. We advocate the need to adopt straightforward, streamlined, simple, and standard solutions to provide smart, seamless, scalable, safe, and secure user experience.