Security of Things™ Forum 2018

The Power of Partnerships in Securing IoT

By most estimates, the Internet of Things is on track to grow to more than 30 billion devices just by the end of this decade. At the same time, the market for Internet of Things technologies is growing by double digit percentages. Bain predicts that by 2020 annual revenues for IoT hardware and software could exceed $470B. In short: the Internet of Things is here, and it represents one of the biggest business opportunities the world has ever seen.

Despite those rosy estimates, however, the Internet of Things brings with it serious risks for businesses. As the events of recent years have shown: tens of billions of connected devices that are already deployed on the Internet of Things have few to any security protections and exhibit lax handling of sensitive customer information. Unlike previous cycles of technology adoption, the consequences for security failure on the Internet of Things will impact not just data or availability, but life and limb.

Internet connected cameras harnessed to create malicious botnets  were a novelty in 2016, when they were used to launch crippling attacks on key Internet infrastructure. By 2018, they’re just another feature of the cyber threat landscape. In the meantime, security researchers have demonstrated life threatening, software based attacks on medical devices, and warning bells have rung from the highest levels of government about the threat of vulnerable, critical infrastructure.

These are not growing pains. They are early rumblings of a storm of attacks that threaten to undermine public confidence in technology and the Internet of Things. Absent public trust and faith, the rosy predictions for Internet of Things growth may dim.

What’s needed to counter these trends isn’t just good technology – but an entire ecosystem that supports the secure deployment, operation and management of connected devices. And that means partnerships – lots of them – between device makers, infrastructure owners and makers of discrete IoT security technologies and services.

That’s why this Security of Things Forum, our fifth, is about The Power of Partnerships. We’ll be doing a deep dive on security partnerships and the best way to foster and nurture secure, IoT ecosystems.

We hope you can join us!

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