Cheaper hardware costs will drive the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices at a breakneck pace over the next five years.
A new report by Juniper Research found that the number of IoT devices will increase by 200% to 46 billion units by 2021.
The accelerating number of connected actuators, sensors and devices will be driven by the reduction in unit costs of the hardware.
Juniper’s report is entitled “The Internet of Things: Consumer, Industrial & Public Services 2016-2021.”
The report reveals that public and industrial services will grow the most over the next five years, averaging more than 24% annually.
But researches warned that the proliferation of IoT technology will create a new bevvy of challenges. Particularly troublesome will be IoT deployments at scale for both end-users and providers.
“The platform landscape is flourishing,” said Steffen Sorrell, author of the research report. “However, analytics and database systems are, for the most part, not architected to handle the Big Data 2.0 era that the IoT brings.”
Juniper’s research pinpointed aspects that needed disruption to allow the successful integration of IoT technology. Those aspects include spatiotemporal analytics and intelligent systems that have the capability of running on less powerful machines like routers.
Security issues still growing
As well, Juniper found that security threats to IoT technology is widening. This year was notable for high profile distributed denial-of-service attacks by botnets.
However, in the medium-term other threats from IoT hackers will also prove troublesome, such as physical asset damage, corporate data theft and personal data theft.
Heavy security investment is currently underway by enterprise and industry to secure IoT technology.
A study in the spring by MarketResearchReports.biz predicted that compound annual growth in the IoT security market will reach nearly 55% over the next year.
This is creating increased opportunities for companies who safeguard IoT systems from malicious attackers trying to gain unauthorized access, misuse data, destroy or deactivated networks, and corrupt data records
However, Juniper warned that investment in consumer IoT security is woefully lacking, leaving a worrying vulnerability that will no doubt prove too inviting for hackers to resist.
