OREANDA-NEWS. The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing at an exponential rate. By 2020, some 50 billion devices will connect to the Internet and the economic value created by IoT could be worth as much as $11.1 trillion— roughly 11% of the global economy by 2025.

Yet, a single cyberattack could inflict millions of dollars in damage. The annual estimated average financial loss, per cybersecurity incident in 2014 was $2.7 million. That’s 34% higher than a year earlier. Our experts have seen a 458% increase in the number of times attackers scanned IoT devices for vulnerabilities over the past 2 years. The security of these new connected devices is essential.

AT&T explores IoT security problems, and how to prevent them, in our second Cybersecurity Insights report, “The CEO’s Guide to Securing the Internet of Things.” Our goal is to help business leaders address this crucial issue.

Our latest Cybersecurity report found:

  • 85% of businesses are considering, exploring, or implementing IoT, but just 14% have a formal audit process to understand how many devices they have and whether these devices are secure.
  • Only 17% of businesses involve their boards when considering IoT security. Board involvement is crucial.  96% of companies that did involve their boards felt confident in the security of their connected devices.

Every executive should take these steps to secure their IoT ecosystem:

  1. Assess your risk
  2. Secure both information and devices
  3. Align your organization and governance for IoT
  4. Define legal and regulatory issues

To help businesses address the urgent need for IoT security, AT&T has formed a strategic alliance with Bayshore Networks, a leader in IoT security software. As a leading integrated solutions provider, AT&T is collaborating with Bayshore in the AT&T Foundry® to create and test cutting edge security solutions specifically for industrial IoT. This work represents one of the industry’s first IoT-specific security product initiatives designed for a virtualized security environment at AT&T’s scale and scope.

Bayshore Networks specializes in the ability to help identify and stop attacks on IoT machines, applications, and industrial controls. This provides unprecedented visibility into operations and helps to protect machine, data and workers. Bayshore Networks also helps facilitate the process to rapidly deploy policy updates across a business’s entire IoT ecosystem, which could contain thousands of connected devices.

The combination of Bayshore’s capabilities, AT&T’s managed security services and the visibility of our global network, will help to deliver industry leading protections for IoT customers.

“The Internet of Things is advancing the future of business, bringing new capabilities and efficiencies to companies to help them stay ahead. However, it is essential to approach IoT with security in mind in order to effectively protect your business.” said Ralph de la Vega, vice chairman of AT&T Inc. and CEO of Business Solutions & International. “We’re committed to helping our customers stay protected as they deploy these new technologies.”

AT&T’s work with Bayshore will let us explore new integrated virtualized security protections and capabilities for IoT customers. Together, we will innovate to explore solutions that help deploy security when and where needed, on-demand, to IoT solutions.