Gartner says 20% of orgs have observed at least one IoT-based attack in the last 3 years

A research by Gartner has indicated that nearly 20% of organizations have observed at least one IoT-based attack in the past three years. To protect against those threats, Gartner forecasts that worldwide spending on IoT security will reach USD1.5 billion in 2018, a 28% increase from 2017 spending of USD1.2 billion.

Organizations will look to increase their understanding of the implications of externalizing network connectivity. These factors will be the main drivers of spending growth for the forecast period with spending on IoT security expected to reach USD 3.1 million in 2021 (see Table 1).

Table 1: Worldwide IoT Security Spending Forecast (Millions of Dollars)

Source: Gartner (March 2018)

Despite the steady year-over-year growth in worldwide spending, Gartner predicts that through 2020, the biggest inhibitor to growth for IoT security will come from a lack of prioritization and implementation of security best practices and tools in IoT initiative planning. This will hamper the potential spend on IoT security by 80%.

While basic security patterns have been revealed in many vertical projects, they have not yet been codified into policy or design templates to allow for consistent reuse. As a result, technical standards for specific IoT security components in the industry are only now just starting to be addressed across established IT security standards bodies, consortium organizations and vendor alliances.

The absence of "security by design" comes from a lack of specific and stringent regulations. Going forward, Gartner expects this trend to change, especially in heavily regulated industries such as healthcare and automotive.

By 2021, Gartner predicts that regulatory compliance will become the prime influencer for IoT security uptake. Industries having to comply with regulations and guidelines aimed at improving critical infrastructure protection (CIP) are being compelled to increase their focus on security as a result of IoT permeating the industrial world.