Why IoT and data security need to go hand in hand

With smart cities and 5G coming down the line, security needs to be top of the agenda when it comes to the Internet of Things, writes Aoife Valentine

Jeff McCann, director of global IoT labs at Dell Technologies Picture: Sean Curtin/True Media

In 2017, Gartner predicted there would be 20.4 billion internet of things (IoT) devices by 2020. Cisco predicted the total amount of data to be generated by these devices would exceed 800 zettabytes – where a zettabyte is equivalent to roughly a trillion gigabytes. That’s a huge number of devices and an almost unimaginable quantity of data, and we’re now less than a year away from that reality.

As we move towards that ...