Along with the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), security concerns are also emerging, with the IoT security market set for steep growth in the coming years, according to Gartner.
Worldwide IoT security spending will reach US$348 million this year, up 23.7 per cent from 2015, Gartner has forecast, rising to US$547 million in 2018.
Gartner additionally forecasts that after 2020, security market spending will increase at a faster rate, “as improved skills, organisational change and more scalable service options improve execution”.
“The market for IoT security products is currently small, but it is growing as both consumers and businesses start using connected devices in ever greater numbers,” Ruggero Contu, Gartner research director, commented.
“Gartner forecasts that 6.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2016, up 30 per cent from 2015, and will reach 11.4 billion by 2018. However, considerable variation exists among different industry sectors as a result of different levels of prioritisation and security awareness.”
Gartner forecasts that by 2020, more than 25 per cent of identified attacks in enterprises will involve IoT, however IoT will account for less than 10 per cent of IT security budgets, with security vendors to be challenged to provide usable IoT security features due to the limited budgets and a decentralised approach to early IoT implementation.
“Vendors will focus too much on spotting vulnerabilities and exploits, rather than segmentation and other long-term means that better protect IoT,” Gartner states.
Contu noted that the effort “is expected to focus more and more on the management, analytics and provisioning of devices and their data”.
“IoT business scenarios will require a delivery mechanism that can also grow and keep pace with requirements in monitoring, detection, access control and other security needs,” Contu commented.
“The future of cloud-based security services is in part linked with the future of the IoT. In fact, the IoT’s fundamental strength in scale and presence will not be fully realised without cloud-based security services to deliver an acceptable level of operation for many organisations in a cost-effective manner.
“By 2020, Gartner predicts that over half of all IoT implementations will use some form of cloud-based security service.”
