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Gartner: Global IoT security spending to hit $348m in 2016

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 sees IoT the root of 25% of attacks by 2020

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.

IoT revenues up 15%; cloud computing a big driver

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A new report shows healthy revenues for 21 benchmarked Internet of Things (IoT) companies in the last quarter of 2015, with revenue growing by almost 15% to levels approaching $7 billion. Cloud computing and IT infrastructure are especially potent drivers of IoT revenues, as vendors help companies cope with ever increasing rivers of data.

In a press release Technology Business Research (TBR) reported that commercial IoT opportunities drove year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter by 14.8% among the 21 companies it tracks in its regular Commercial IoT Benchmark report. Total revenues for the quarter were $6.7 billion among benchmarked vendors that include Verizon, Microsoft, Intel, Google, Amazon, Siemens, Cisco, Ericsson and Oracle.

See also: Hackers drive huge growth in IoT security market

“Effectively, every type of IT and operational technology (OT) vendor will have a stake in the growing commercial IoT market, as IoT solutions will drive increased use of diverse IT and OT products and services,” said Dan Callahan, a TBR analyst specializing in devices and IoT.

TBR says revenue growth is being driven by a rise in go-to-market refreshes by top vendors who are striving to become known as early leaders in the commercial IoT space.

“In addition to building interest in established IT products, commercial IoT will create growth in specialized business consulting, hardware, network, development, management and security components,” said Callahan. “IT and OT vendors that are quick to capture IoT opportunities within their current customer base, and attract new ones through developer programs and investing in growing mindshare, will enjoy additional, immediate, revenue opportunities.”

Revenues driven by explosive growth in data management needs

TBR’s report showed vendors are looking to become early IoT leaders in order to drive profits in this emerging industry. Vendors who take an early IoT leadership position are benefiting because there is less competition, customers have limited outsourcing options due to early IoT’s security challenges, and clients require custom solutions due to the lack of technology standards.

Cloud computing services posted the highest year-over-year revenue growth rate of 79% to record $604 million in the quarter. This growth is being propelled by the vastly increasing need being created for platforms to process and store data.

TSR also noted strong growth in IT services and ICT infrastructure, which charted a 51.4% growth rate in revenue for the quarter. This subsector is benefiting from the increasing capacity requirements created by the huge streams of IoT data that is being generated, as more companies struggle to tame the growing flood of information into actionable insights.

4 Cutting-Edge Gaming Technologies With Incredible Promise

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As he delivered the 2012 DICE conference keynote, Skyrim creator Todd Howard said he sees games "as the ultimate combination of art and technology." It's true. No other art form more tightly ties technology to its innovations and storytelling techniques.
With a new generation of video game consoles upon us, a booming world of innovation in tablet and mobile games, and PC gaming more robust than it's ever been, the future of the technology and game art is nothing short of exhilarating.

So what technologies are developers experimenting with today that give us a glimpse of future gaming innovation?
Some of these examples are audacious, so much so we can't be sure they'll ever actually go anywhere. Others are surefire hits for the next decade of gaming.

1. Oculus Rift

Image: Oculus VR Since the 1980s, science fiction authors and geeks have dreamed of a future in which we all play games with virtual reality headsets.
Oculus Rift seeks to make that dream a reality, as many before have tried to do. It was funded on Kickstarter, and went on to impress tech pundits and reviewers as the best effort yet.
It's easy to write off — "No one ever wants to look goofy, wearing a giant VR headset while he games in the living room." But here's some food for thought: Doom creator and actual rocket scientist John Carmack just left the game software company he founded more than 20 years ago to serve full-time as Oculus VR's chief technical officer.

2. Xbox One Kinect

Image: Mashable, Christina Ascani The Xbox One's Kinect voice command navigation sure feels like the future.
Even the Kinect's Xbox 360 predecessor was impressive, particularly the full-body motion controls made possible by its 3D camera. We haven't seen much in the way of motion controls on the Xbox One yet, but the new Kinect is even more powerful than the last.
Sony’s console offers many of the same features with the PlayStation Camera, but it’s not as powerful as the Xbox One’s improved model.
The Xbox One's entire user interface is built around voice commands, and they feel amazing. It's too bad they only work about 80% of the time. That precludes any hardcore gaming applications, but you feel this should be the future of user interfaces — and it might just be.

3. Digital Distribution

It's already happened on PC and mobile: You download games; you don't buy them at the store anymore. Yet consoles still lag behind. Why?
There are socioeconomic factors at play, but it's as much a culture gap. Console gamers have spent years collecting discs and special edition artwork or toys with their games. And don't forget the established culture of game lending among friends.
When Microsoft announced the Xbox One would require an online connection to facilitate digital games, live updates and cloud computing, console gamers backlashed vigorously.
PC gamers already went through this turbulent transition when Valve Software's Steam platform launched in 2004. At first they resisted the change, but the benefits and convenience of digital distribution for both consumer and publisher became too obvious to ignore, when the right infrastructure was finally in place. The same switch is inevitable on consoles; it just might take awhile.
It reminds us of a wise William Gibson quote: "The future is already here; it's just not evenly distributed."

4. Gaming in the Cloud

Image: Nirak, Flickr The sky, as it were, is the limit with this technology. Nothing offers more longterm promise for the future of gaming than cloud computing. It's not 100% about the graphics; that will still be accomplished best on a local machine in the immediate future. Rather, it's about connecting players with each other, with the developers and with the dynamic game world they're inhabiting.
Imagine a game world in which players leave hints for you at every turn, as in 2011's Dark Souls. Or picture fellow gamers dropping in and out of your game seamlessly, blending in with the crowd of non-player characters on the simulated streets of Chicago, as in next year's Watch Dogs.
With cloud technology, game developers could push live updates and events into your game world in seamless real time. They could even carry the load of some non-urgent, non-visual calculations, allowing your Xbox One or PlayStation 4 to dedicate more brainpower to making things prettier.
There are other uses, too. Sony acquired Gaikai, a service that streamed entire games like interactive YouTube videos, in 2012 for $380 million. We later learned Sony plans to use Gaikai's technology to offer old games from past PlayStation platforms on the PS4 by streaming them, handling all the graphics on Sony's servers.
As long as consumers adopt faster and faster broadband Internet connections in the coming years, this tech shows a lot of promise.