by Brenon Daly
For most technology, security is somewhat of an afterthought. That’s particularly true for emerging enterprise technology, where shiny new gadgets and slick new software dazzle us with promise. Under the spell of early adoption, we focus on all of the great things the technology makes possible for us and our businesses. And then we get hacked.
Or something else happens to take off a bit of the luster of the new products. Reality intrudes on dream technology. Belatedly, we find that we just might need to put a lock on some of the doors opened by the new products. That’s one way to think about the recent record surge in acquisitions done to secure all of the ‘things’ that businesses are offering to make their current products more valuable or expand into more valuable markets.
The term ‘IoT security’ has popped up an unprecedented number of times so far this year in 451 Research‘s M&A Knowledgebase. In fact, deal volume in this rapidly emerging field is set to triple in 2019, compared with both 2018 and 2017. And to underscore the seriousness of the challenge around shoring up all of those IoT implementations, big buyers are doing these deals. Cisco Systems, Check Point Software and Palo Alto Networks have all put up IoT security prints so far this year, according to our data.
Yet all of this M&A activity may be too little, too late. Even with this dramatic acceleration in the number of IoT security deals, our data shows this crucial component for all of those implementations still accounts for only a lowly single-digit percentage of all IoT dealmaking. In other words, vendors are still overwhelmingly focused on shopping for IoT technology that they can add to their portfolios rather than making sure their IoT technology is secure.
Those priorities, however, are not necessarily serving customers. In fact, customers who plan to boost their IoT spending in the coming year told us that they plan to spend more on shoring up the IoT technology than anything they can necessarily do with the new technology they plan to buy. Almost half (46%) of respondents to 451 Research’s Voice of the Enterprise: Internet of Things, Budgets and Outlook 2019 indicated ‘improved security’ is the single biggest driver for their increase in overall IoT spending.
Figure 1: Drivers of increasing IoT spending in 2019
