Worldwide IoT security spending to reach US$348 million in 2016, up 23.7% from 2015: Gartner

Worldwide spending on security related to the Internet of Things (IoT) will reach US$348 million in 2016, a 23.7% increase from 2015 spending of US$281.5 million, according to Gartner, Inc.

Gartner, an information technology research and advisory company based in Stamford, Conn., said that by 2018, spending on IoT security is expected to reach US$547 million. Although overall spending will initially be moderate, Gartner said in a press release on Monday, it predicts that IoT security market spending will increase at a faster rate after 2020, as improved skills, organizational change and more scalable service options improve execution.

In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2020, more than 25% of identified attacks in enterprises will involve IoT, although IoT will account for less than 10% of IT security budgets. “Security vendors will be challenged to provide usable IoT security features because of the limited assigned budgets for IoT and the decentralized approach to early IoT implementations in organizations,” Gartner said in the release. “Vendors will focus too much on spotting vulnerabilities and exploits, rather than segmentation and other long-term means that better protect IoT.”

The market for IoT security products is dependent on IoT adoption by the consumer and industry sectors, Gartner noted. Endpoint spending will be dominated by connected cars, as well as other complex machines and vehicles, such as heavy trucks, commercial aircraft and farming and construction equipment. [click image below to enlarge]

“The effort of securing IoT is expected to focus more and more on the management, analytics and provisioning of devices and their data,” said Ruggero Contu, research director at Gartner, in the release. “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 said that 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 realized without cloud-based security services to deliver an acceptable level of operation for many organizations in a cost-effective manner,” he said. “By 2020, Gartner predicts that over half of all IoT implementations will use some form of cloud-based security service.”

Contu noted that the market for IoT security products is currently small, but is growing as both consumers and businesses start using connected devices in ever greater numbers. Gartner forecasts that 6.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2016, up 30% from 2015, and will reach 11.4 billion by 2018.