The Journey to IoT Maturity, a follow-up report to an IoT study conducted in 2017, is based on interviews with IT decision makers from UK and US IoT adopters within key industries, including energy and utilities, state and local government, construction, technology, and telecommunications.
According to its findings the clear signal is that IoT is now a bigger IT priority than ever for organisations across all sectors.
However, those respondents ranking security as one of their top three challenges when rolling out IoT fell from 58% in 2017 to 24% in 2022, while the proportion of respondents viewing it as a technical challenge also dropped from 65% in 2017 to 42% this year, indicating fewer concerns but still highlighting it as an issue.
And while companies might be less worried about security, it is still on their risk list.
The report did find, however, that there are growing fears over data privacy issues.
Data privacy regulation is the second highest (political, economic or social) challenge for IoT adopters, with 36% placing it in their top three, just behind the need to reprioritise spending due to Covid-19 (37%) and ahead of budget cuts resulting from less revenue during the pandemic (35%).
Fears over big data have also risen over the last five years, with 19% of respondents (up from 11% in 2017) placing it in their top three IoT rollout challenges, and one in four citing regulatory concerns.
The introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and other privacy regulations since Wi-SUN’s 2017 report are thought to be a factor in this growth.
Commenting on the report’s finding Phil Beecher, President and CEO, Wi-SUN Alliance, said, “Data privacy concerns have gone up, understandably, with more legislation putting the spotlight on data protection. Since our last study, stricter privacy laws have increased pressure on organisations to protect sensitive data. This includes the GDPR in Europe and various state-level laws in the US.
“Among our survey respondents, we saw that concerns were higher in the UK, where over half (53%) of organisations include secure data collection in their IoT strategies compared to just a third (34%) in the US. IoT initiatives, such as smart metering, streetlighting and those using environmental, air quality and acoustic sensors, are increasingly generating huge volumes of data, and while this information may be made entirely ‘secure by design’, the risks remain.”
Reports suggest that there are a growing number of attacks on IoT devices leading to the theft of confidential data and the launch of DDoS attacks.
Organisations will need to continue to overcome both technical and non-technical challenges with the support of the industry, including IoT solutions and device companies.
“With more than 90% of our respondents recognising that they must invest in IoT over the next 12 months to remain competitive, failure to navigate these important issues is not an option,” concluded Beecher.
