EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

IoT devices are becoming increasingly commonplace at home and in the workplace. It makes sense – it’s convenient to have your refrigerator remind you when it’s time to buy more milk with an SMS—which you might read on your work mobile phone.  But the ease comes at a high price: With more connections and interconnections comes the opportunity for cyberattacks to spread quickly across all platforms. One weak link can quickly open access to everything. But what if things were different – more secure?

Enterprises want to be able to capitalize on the convenience of IoT devices. But, as Bain & Company writes in Forbes, the lack of comprehensive security across devices is just too large of an issue to take the risk. A new Bain & Co. study has found that a whopping 70 percent of businesses would buy more IoT devices if security wasn’t an issue. What’s more, 93 percent of executives would be willing to pay 22 percent more for devices with security they could be confident in. The upshot is that IoT vendors could actually gain a competitive edge by offering more secure devices.

With IoT attacks on the rise—20 percent of businesses experienced an IoT attack in the past three years—spending on defense against attacks is projected to increase to more than three billion by 2021, according to Gartner. In addition, analysts predict 25 percent of cyberattacks in 2020 will target IoT environments.

In the interim, legislation aimed at setting baseline security measures for IoT devices has been proposed. But progress on the IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2017 seems to be slow.

As Bain & Company writes in Forbes, “IoT device vendors and ecosystem players that move quickly to improve the security around IoT devices are likely to reap rewards, both from their ability to earn a premium and from an expanded market.”

Get the full story at Forbes.