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The Internet of Things (IoT) has already gained rapid traction across distinct industries, ranging from manufacturing, retail and healthcare to smart cities. The technology is actively evolving as Gartner predicts there will be around 25 billion IoT connections by 2025. This boosts the convenience of people experiencing at home and in cities, and assists in solving resourcing issues.

This also enables businesses to scale production performance, introduce automation and drive efficiencies. In a new research from Kaspersky, 61 percent of organizations are already making use of IoT platforms despite the considerable security risks that come with their adoption.

The new report, titled “With superpower comes super responsibility: benefits and challenges of IoT in business”, reveals that the use of IoT-driven business platforms is rising year-on-year in almost every industry.

According to the report, the most significant growth was seen in hospitality, from 53 percent in 2018 to 63 percent in 2019; healthcare, from 56 percent to 66 percent; and finance, from 60 percent to 68 percent. The report further noted that the IT, telecom and finance companies have embraced IoT to a greater extent than all other verticals.

IoT has many use cases such as smart cities, grids, metering, transportation and logistics in addition to automated manufacturing and connected heating, venting and air conditioning (HVAC).

However, the extensive use of IoT also leads to the high potential of cybersecurity risks and vulnerabilities. In the Kaspersky survey, 28 percent of businesses using IoT platforms reported that they had experienced incidents involving non-computing connected devices last year.

Head of KasperskyOS Business Unit, Kaspersky, Grigory Sizov said that “As the survey shows, cybersecurity is also a question that needs resolving in the IoT space – in terms of security of equipment, technical and organisational protection measures and data privacy, as well as other factors.”

In order to securely capitalize on the capabilities and benefits IoT platforms have, Kaspersky suggests that organizations analyze the status of a device's security before its implementation, conduct regular security audits, establish processes for taking information on vulnerabilities in software and applications, deploy cybersecurity solutions and leverage IoT devices that are secured by design.

Grigory further said, “IoT is a powerful business enabler but to reap its benefits organisations need to put in a considerable amount of effort. It demands dedicated business processes, as well as expertise, to ensure it is effectively implemented. It is important to consider security at an early stage of IoT implementation and we want to help our customers address this task by developing IoT security solutions and expertise within Kaspersky.”