Proliferation of embedded computing devices adds to cyber security risk: Gartner

As more data gets generated by an every-increasing number of devices with Internet Protocol addresses, securing that information is going to become more important, suggests information technology research firm Gartner Inc.

Meanwhile, Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner predicts that by 2018, 3D printing will result in US$100 million a year in intellectual property losses and by 2014, there will be an increase in vehicles with “automated assist” technologies.

“By 2020, enterprises and governments will fail to protect 75 percent of sensitive data, and declassify and grant broad/public access to it,” Gartner stated in a press release Oct 8.

“Near Term Flag: By 2015, at least one more Snowden or WikiLeaks moment will occur, indicating an upward trend in corporations and governments’ acceptance that they cannot protect all sensitive information.”

Read more: Canadian Underwriter October Issue – Cover Feature: Privacy pause

In that release, Gartner announced its top predictions in information technology for 2014 and beyond. The company’s researchers highlighted those predictions at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Oct. 6 to 10 in Orlando. One topic of discussion was the “Internet of Things.”

“In 2009, there were 2.5 billion connected devices with unique IP addresses to the Internet, most of these were devices people carry such as cell phones and PCs,” Gartner stated in a separate release highlighting a presentation by Peter Sondergaard, its senior vice president and global head of research. “In 2020, there will be up to 30 billion devices connected with unique IP addresses, most of which will be products.”

But many of these devices will not be computers, Gartner suggested.

“Computing power will be cheap and covert,” Sondergaard stated in a release. “We won’t know it is there; it will be in our jewelry and in our clothing. We will throw more computers into our laundry in a week than we’ve used in our lifetimes so far.”

Those devices with IP addresses will produce data, Gartner noted.

“With all of this valuable data within the IT organization, cyber security will be an ongoing concern, both inside and outside the enterprise,” according to Gartner.

“The security of embedded technologies that your organization has right now may be the most important operational responsibility you will have in 2020,” Sondergaard stated. “Digitalization will create new infrastructures and new vulnerabilities in our infrastructures. We recommend that you build a portfolio of security vendors because no single vendor addresses more than a fraction of your problem. Everyone will need to establish more agile security processes.”

Gartner is also predicting a rise in loss of intellectual property due to 3D printing technologies.

“By 2018, 3D printing will result in the loss of at least $100 billion per year in intellectual property globally,” Gartner stated. “The plummeting costs of 3D printers, scanners and 3D modeling technology, combined with improving capabilities, makes the technology for IP theft more accessible to would-be criminals. Importantly, 3D printers do not have to produce a finished good in order to enable IP theft. The ability to make a wax mold from a scanned object, for instance, can enable the thief to produce large quantities of items that exactly replicate the original.”

Read more: Canadian Underwriter August Issue – Feature: All-Around View

Other predictions from Gartner include a rise in vehicles and other machines “smart systems” that cannot be overridden by humans. By 2024, Gartner predicts “at least” 10% “of activities potentially injurious to human life will require mandatory use of a nonoverideable ‘smart system.'”

This means, Gartner added, that “Economically priced cars with ‘automated assist’ technology added as standard equipment will increase by through 2014 as an indicator of adoption.

“The increasing deployment of ‘smart systems’ capable of automatically responding to external events is increasing all the time, but there remains a deep-seated resistance to eliminating the option for human intervention,” Gartner stated. “The capability, reliability and availability of appropriate technology are not the issue. The willingness of the general population to accept initial widespread deployment and increasing removal of manual override options is the issue.”