As companies continue to use unsecured IoT devices for business and operational decisions, the IoT industry presents possible catastrophic security risks for loss of data or theft. The devices keep coming. Technology research firm Gartner predicts that:
- By 2020 there will be some 21 billion IoT devices in existence, up from 5 billion in 2015
- About 8 billion of those devices will be industrial devices, not for consumers
- Both present juicy targets for hackers
An article in the recent issue of Wired, called, "IoT Is Coming Even If The Security Isn’t Ready," starts out by presenting some bleak statistics on the likelihood of companies suffering loss of data or theft through security hacking and breaches. Very quickly, however, industry experts weigh in to discuss how the current inadequacies of IoT devices and security are partially a result of security never being contemplated in the design or development stages for many internet-connected devices.
Other contributing factors include lack of standards for security in the industry, and the need to create a solution without making costly security compromises.
According to one expert, “the industry is capable of creating such a solution, but the catch is that it needs to do it on a very accelerated timetable. At the moment, in the race between IoT security and IoT adoption, the latter is winning.”
Read the full piece in Wired here.
