Gartner Says Worldwide IoT Security Spending Will Reach $1.5 Billion In 2018

Internet of Things (IoT)-based attacks are already a reality. A recent CEB, now Gartner, survey found that nearly 20 percent of organizations observed at least one IoT-based attack in the past three years. To protect against those threats Gartner, Inc. forecasts that worldwide spending on IoT securitywill reach $1.5 billion in 2018, a 28 percent increase from 2017 spending of $1.2 billion.

“In IoT initiatives, organizations often don’t have control over the source and nature of the software and hardware being utilized by smart connected devices,” said Ruggero Contu, research director at Gartner. “We expect to see demand for tools and services aimed at improving discovery and asset management, software and hardware security assessment, and penetration testing. In addition, 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 $3.1 billion 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 percent.

“Although IoT security is consistently referred to as a primary concern, most IoT security implementations have been planned, deployed and operated at the business-unit level, in cooperation with some IT departments to ensure the IT portions affected by the devices are sufficiently addressed,” explained Mr. Contu. “However, coordination via common architecture or a consistent security strategy is all but absent, and vendor product and service selection remains largely ad hoc, based upon the device provider’s alliances with partners or the core system that the devices are enhancing or replacing.”