In the past few years, IoT has grown from a set of cutting edge technologies to a situation where almost everything from automobiles to household items are connected. Different researchers and technology companies such as Cisco have estimated that by the end of 2020, the world might see up to 50 billion devices connected. The world might even get to a point where devices that lack IoT capabilities get too expensive since manufacturers cannot harvest any data from them. This data makes the Internet of Things interesting for companies.
As the use of IoT grows (global IoT market is growing at a rate that data scientists do not think will reduce anytime soon), enterprises are beginning to see the importance of artificial intelligence, analytics, and business models that transform operations. However, their data management processes and tools currently at use are not able to keep up with the complexity that comes with modern digital businesses. This is where DataOps comes in. It enables intelligent data operations by getting the right information to the right place and at the right time, thus improving enterprises’ efficiency.
However, with the accelerating adoption of IoT by enterprises, there are a number of problems that they need to be aware of. A report by the World Economic Forum shows how enterprises have placed a lot of strain on the global systems that we depend on as well as cyberattack issues on the same systems. When the IoT is attacked or has a problem, this means that all the enterprises connected to it are threatened as well. This makes security is one of the greatest issues stalling the growth of IoT. However, there are a number of other pitfalls affecting the adoption of IoT by enterprises.
IoT Pitfalls
1. Cloud Attacks
Large amounts of data running the IoT are stored in the cloud. This means that cloud providers are a target for cyberattacks. Although there is a growing sensitization of this issue, cybersecurity has not been given enough attention in relation to the threat at in poses. For example, the report by the World Economic Forum suggests that there could be an economic damage worth between USD 50 billion to over USD 100 billion if a single cloud provider was attacked.
2. Internet Break-up
Today, the world has seen a growing number of terrorist attacks as well as cross border attacks in some countries. If this keeps growing, some governments might be forced to break up the internet at regional or even national levels. These issues, as well as other issues such as economic surges and loss of government power, are a real problem to the growth of IoT. This is because breaking up the internet would create barriers hindering the flow of transactions and content.
3. AI-Built Ransomware
Researchers have claimed that cloud service providers are the next target for ransomware. Cloud providers have created complex connected networks that could develop a single failure affecting multiple companies and government entities. AI is getting to a point where it can create a sophisticated code that avoids detection by machine routines. This will make it very easy for ransomware created by AI to infiltrate the cloud servers and cause a lot of damage to the flow of data, affecting the adoption of IoT.
4. Technology Standards
A network based on the IoT technology works together as one. This brings a problem in making sure that an enterprise can effectively process all the data received from the devices connected to the network. To harvest all the benefits of IoT, enterprises are supposed to make sure that they create the same technology standards and make it easy for all the devices connected to a network to understand each other. However, the world lacks a universally accepted technology standard that could make IoT devices speak in the same language.
5. IoT and Legacy Systems
Most enterprises have moved ahead and added more IoT devices to their networks, not knowing that their legacy systems slow down their efforts (older systems are not able to cope up with the demands of the modern market). These legacy systems create one of the biggest challenges in IoT growth when it comes to taking in data from IoT devices. Let’s take an example of a health center that uses a number of devices connected to each other. These devices collect patient data that moves into the system holding patient records. However, the same health center has different departments using different electronic health records with different capabilities. This makes it very difficult to connect the systems at place with modern IoT devices. To make sure that enterprises benefit from IoT, they should move off legacy systems and implement IoT technologies in their place.
Conclusion
The adoption of IoT by enterprises is important as it will make sharing and processing of data easy. However, as much as every other enterprise is rushing to tap into IoT, it is important for them to understand the challenges that they might face. This will make it easy for them to avoid additional costs and security breaches as well as easily surpass competitors who lack the knowledge.
Author bio: Kevin Klein serves as Principal Program Manager at SentryOne. He is a founder and former president of PASS and the author of popular IT books like SQL in a Nutshell. Kevin is a renowned database expert, software industry veteran, Microsoft SQL Server MVP, and long-time blogger at SentryOne. As a noted leader in the SQL Server community, Kevin blogs about Microsoft Data Platform features and best practices, SQL Server trends, and professional development for data professionals.
