The Digital Age has ushered in a new way of thinking in economies around the world and Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the fastest emerging ecosystems that delivers significant business benefits valued at trillions of dollars across industries. IoT is already impacting how goods are produced and distributed, how products are refined and serviced etc. due to the explosion of data generated by millions of devices, the growth of cloud and the access of integrated real-time information in the palm of the consumers. According to McKinsey, IoT has a total potential economic impact of $3.9 trillion to $11.1 trillion a year by 2025.
As more businesses undergo digital transformations and increasingly see value in IoT, the number of “things” too has increased dramatically. This year alone, Gartner forecasts, that nearly 8.4 billion connected “things” will be in use worldwide. The rise of IoT has also put a lot of focus on security. With businesses on target to employ 3.1 billion connected things in 2017, IoT networks are vulnerable to attacks by hackers. Even as companies are moving from demos and prototypes to undertaking large-scale deployments, they have not thought about end-to-end security when it comes to IoT.
Data breaches in an IoT network can have two major impacts: firstly, it can result in injury or lead to loss of human life. Ransomware attacks in healthcare are a perfect example of how hackers can control the access to medical records, putting the patient’s life at risk. Ransomware attacks more than quadrupled to 200 in 2016, with nearly half happening in the healthcare sector, according to Beazley Breach Insights. One of the major ransomware attack this year was WannaCry which affected major organizations including hospitals and public amenities.