The impact of the IoT and future challenges

According to research group Gartner, by 2020 there will be more than 26 billion connected devices in use by businesses and individuals. With such a proliferation of devices, there will be tremendous opportunity, but also tremendous challenges. Many of these challenges involve security. In 2013, hackers used internet-enabled heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems set up in Target stores to steal 40 million credit card numbers from the U.S. retailer, and many companies have not improved their IoT security in the years since. The 2016 Mirai attack used IoT devices to cause Internet shutdowns across Europe and North America, resulting in an estimated USD 110 million in economic damage.

Securing multiple points of vulnerability is a major challenge for organisations and requires a comprehensive, end-to-end approach. Such approaches are difficult to develop, however, most hackers concentrate on breaching one specific element within the technology stack while system operators must provide protection against all possible areas of attack. In addition, while everyone agrees that security is vital, many companies are not willing to pay higher prices for greater security. This could prevent the growth of many IoT applications.

The lack of standards presents another challenge to IoT growth. There are currently no overarching standards for how the different parts of the IoT technology stack should interact. Instead, different industries and organizations use their own standards. These can be incompatible, even among players in the same industry. This lack of standards may slow IoT adoption or discourage manufacturers from developing new technology, since they do not know whether their innovations will meet whatever guidelines are eventually adopted.

Another challenge will come from the need to develop infrastructure capable of connecting billions of IoT devices. Current centralized systems will require huge investments in order to handle such large amounts of information. It will likely be necessary to decentralise IoT networks and make greater use of edge computing solutions. Peer-to-peer networks, where devices identify and authenticate each other directly, could also help to create more flexible ways of handling the vast amounts of data.