Quarter of cyber-attacks will involve IoT by 2020, says Gartner

Spending on IoT security will initially be "moderate", says market watcher

A quarter of cyber-attacks will involve the Internet of Things by 2020, according to Gartner, which said security spending in this area may take a while to take off.

The analyst expects worldwide spending on IoT security to initially be "moderate", increasing by 23.7 per cent to $348m this year, before rising to $547m in 2018.

Spending will rise more rapidly after 2020 due to "improved skills, organisational change and more scalable service options improving execution", it added.

"The market for IoT security products is currently small but it is growing as both consumers and businesses start using connected devices in ever greater numbers," said Ruggero Contu, research director at Gartner.

According to the market watcher by 2020, more than 25 per cent of identified attacks in organisations will involve IoT.

Despite this, IoT will account for less than 10 per cent of IT security budgets, Gartner added.

"The effort of securing IoT is expected to focus more and more on the management, analytics and provisioning of devices and their data. 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," said Contu.

"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 realised without cloud-based security services to deliver an acceptable level of operation for many organisations in a cost-effective manner. By 2020, Gartner predicts that over half of all IoT implementations will use some form of cloud-based security service."