Earlier this year, Palo Alto Networks, the world’s largest cyber-security technology solution provider, commissioned Starfleet Research, our IT market research firm, to produce a series of research-based content assets focused on best practices in Internet of Things (IoT) Security. The need for unbiased, comprehensive and authoritative resources from a leader in the field of benchmarking best practices in technology-enabled business initiatives was clear.
Today, according to the research we conducted for The 2023 Benchmark Report on IoT Security, 46% of businesses, government agencies, and other organizations are still struggling to gain visibility into the ever-growing number of IoT devices on their networks. That 54% of them view their existing cybersecurity solutions as inadequate for protecting against the potential threats posed by IoT devices makes it clear that a vast number of IT and security teams still have a lot of work to do in this area.
As Palo Alto Networks, which is putting these new resources to good use in order to to educate their target prospects, and as the basis for their content marketing and lead generation campaigns, notes in their company blog:
“The number of connected IoT devices will continue to rise in the coming years, reaching an average of over 9,000 devices per enterprise by 2025. Unfortunately, most existing IoT security solutions lack any inbuilt prevention or enforcement and employ dated signature-based discovery methods focused on known devices. Poor IoT security was a factor in several infamous breaches in recent years, including those at SolarWinds and Colonial Pipeline, ultimately costing billions of dollars to remediate.
The 2023 IoT Security Benchmark Report reveals how top-performing organizations use advanced IoT security to protect connected devices from known and unknown threats. The report was developed by Starfleet Research, a world leader in benchmarking best practices in technology-enabled business initiatives. A team of subject matter experts used primary and secondary research techniques that engaged IT and cybersecurity leaders, IT staff and other industry practitioners with firsthand experience with IoT security in their organizations.”
Following the publication of The 2023 Benchmark Report on IoT Security, Starfleet Research produced two industry sector-focused reports about IoT Security, one focused on best practices of top-performing organizations in the retail industry and the other focused on best practices of top-performing organizations in the public sector. Both titles are 25 pages in length and provide information, insights and specific guidance for how organizations can safeguard against data breaches and types of other attacks via IoT devices by utilizing next-generation technology to actively monitor network activity, enabling the detection of any abnormal behavior that may indicate a security threat. Additional titles in this series will be announced in the future.