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The rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the tandem acceleration in malicious attacks on connected devices will drive worldwide expenditures on IoT security by 24% this year to $348 million. And that’s the good news; according to a new report that momentum isexpected to accelerate significantly after 2020.

An Information Week article reported Gartner’s latest predictions on the IoT security market in a new market report released this week entitled “Forecast: IoT Security, Worldwide, 2016”.

“Gartner forecasts that 6.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2016, up 30 percent from 2015, and will reach 11.4 billion by 2018,” said Gartner research director Ruggero Contu. “However, considerable variation exists among different industry sectors as a result of different levels of prioritization and security awareness.”

The Gartner report sees moderate IoT security spending in the next few years as the technology continues to establish itself. It predicts respectable spending growth that will increase to $547 million in 2018 and to $841 million in 2020.

However, after 2020 the report expects IoT security spending to take on much greater momentum, “as improved skills, organizational change and more scalable service options improve execution.”

The adoption of IoT technology in both consumer and industrial sectors will also be a major growth accelerant in connected devices.  And as the proliferation of connected devices accelerates, IoT vendors will be forced to prioritize a radically evolving set of security challenges.

Gartner’s report anticipates that over 25% of identified security attacks on enterprises will be IoT-related by 2020. Yet with less than 10% of IT security budgets expected to be allocated to IoT by then, a dangerous security mismatch is looming.

In light of budget restrictions, vendors will struggle to create immediate security fixes and so will likely focus excessively on exploits and vulnerabilities. But Gartner predicts that the industry’s preoccupation with putting out IoT security fires will distract them from finding long-term security solutions.

In order to properly secure IoT, enterprises will “focus more and more on the management, analytics and provisioning of devices and their data,” said Contu. “IoT business scenarios will require a delivery mechanism that can also grow and keep pace with requirements in monitoring, detection, access control and other security needs.”

He adds that cloud-based security services are vital to the ensuring that IoT technology reach its full potential in strength and scale. Gartner predicts that by 2020 half of all IoT implementations will employ some type of cloud-based security to satisfy regulatory and reliability demands.

Barcelona is Spain’s poster child for the seemingly endless enthusiasm for Smart City initiatives among those in the Internet of Things space. And why not? Industry players stand to make money and city governors can earn kudos for creating budget efficiencies while appearing technologically ‘with it’.

However, some technology experts are wondering if the echo chamber of smart city enthusiasts is drowning out the average citizens’ basic question about smart cities: What’s in it for me?

A recent Computer World article looked at Barcelona’s strenuous efforts to make it one of Europe’s smartest smart cities.

Since launching its smart city push three years ago, Barcelona has instituted smart parking, smart streetlights, smartphone tourism apps and sensors monitoring air quality and noise along its major streets. This adds to a city beach bedecked with self-powered lighting units and the network of free Wi-Fi access points for Barcelona’s parks, beaches and other public areas that will eventually total 1,500 hot spots.

Yet some industry experts have questioned whether Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau is fully committed to continuing the smart city strategy, with many city residents now publically challenging the projects’ tangible value. These technology analysts say that Barcelona is an example of a broader concern about leaders of the world’s biggest cities who are not answering citizens’ questions about  the relevance and value of these IoT projects to their lives.

“They asked, ‘What’s in it for me?’ ” said Bettina Tratz-Ryan, an analyst with Gartner analyst. “We have a lot of smart city tech pushed by vendors everywhere, but cities are asking for citizen engagement [along with smart city projects] and want to avoid test beds where they won’t see any benefit.”

Pushing politicians to adopt ever more smart technology are city managers who look to improve infrastructure efficiencies of their cities for things like street lights and water mains. But much of this technology remains invisible to the average citizen.

However, some elected leaders are beginning to see the importance of more above ground smart city technology that can improve direct services to businesses and citizens.

For example, Amsterdam is implementing smart technology to strengthen the city’s environment and public engagement, while Atlanta is looking to improve public safety through installing more surveillance cameras. Both Kansas City and Boston are pushing to expand Internet broadband to a greater swath of its businesses and residents to boost the technological capacity of its citizens.

“There are different motivations for smart cities,” said Tratz-Ryan. She highlighted Singapore as a city that is adding intelligent technology to many private and government services. “Singapore is in fact seen as a smart city test bed for cities like Dubai and Paris.”

As the Internet of Things (IoT) market begins to boom, we are bound to see the government take a more active role in investment and policing what is right and wrong in the industry.

That’s what an April 6 notice on the Federal Register by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) seems to suggest, asking for all parties involved in IoT to discuss with the administration about the evolution of IoT and shifts in global economies from the new technology.

See Also: Will IIoT Bolster Industrial Automation Investments? 

“NTIA seeks broad input from all interested stakeholders — including the private industry, researchers, academia and civil society — on the potential benefits and challenges of [Internet of Things] technologies and what role, if any, the U.S. government should play in this area,” said NTIA in the notice.

While it reads civilly enough, the U.S. government has shown a lack of enthusiasm for major projects like commercial drones, which we shut down by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 2015.

That might worry IoT stakeholders that want to see the market grow unhindered. If new regulations or subsidies are set in place, it might change the dynamics of the market drastically.

Federal Times explains that the comments will be added to a green paper, which will be given to the government to “identify key issues impacting deployment of these technologies, highlight potential benefits and challenges and identify possible roles for the federal government in fostering the advancement of IoT technologies in partnership with the private sector.”

While IoT has been around for a decade now, it has only gained its bearings in the last three years. The growth in the consumer sector, with devices like Nest’s thermostat, Philips Hue, and Amazon Dash Button selling well, has brought more interest from all across the industry, which Gartner claims will balloon to 26 billion IoT devices by 2020.

It doesn’t appear to be a market desperate for government intervention, though no doubt some will argue for and against government assistance.