How Nigeria can leverage $37Bn IoT security market

Presently, it is almost impossible to go through a week in global technology news without reading something about the Internet of Things (IoT), with the security market edging to over $36billion USD by 2021, according to a new market research report published by MarketsandMarkets. The market is estimated to grow from projected $7.90 billion in 2016 to $36.95 billion by 2021, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 36.1%.

In an assessment of Nigeria’s readiness to leverage IoT, Idemudia Dima-Okojie, director at Openspace Digital Technologies told Nigeria CommunicationsWeek that, especially with the ongoing innovations in driverless cars and many other innovations over the past decades, IoT is an evolution towards something greater.

The major forces driving the IoT security market, according to the report, are rise in security concerns for critical infrastructures such as utilities, smart grids, and manufacturing facilities and stringent regulations and compliance requirements.

Dima-Okojie said, “Now, in the scenario where Lagos is actually a Smart City, as traffic builds due to the delayed construction on Gbagada – Oshodi road, traffic data would be automatically fed to the Lagos traffic management system, which in turn would send this information to the Lagos Smart City Management System (this system would be made up of different Lagos networks including, Traffic management, Security, Water, Education, Power etc and individual Smart Homes would have access to the information within this system).

“With this information available on the Lagos Smart City Management System, your Smart Home’s system would identify traffic data, and instead of 6:45am, your Smart Home’s Alarm would wake you up at possibly 6:00am so you leave for the airport early enough with the hope to ride out the traffic on Gbagada – Oshodi road, or completely avoid that route and take an alternative longer route to the airport.

“In essence, the true value we get from the Internet of Things revolution is ‘Intelligence’; brought about by the ability to derive meaningful realtime information from data available around us today.

So where do we start from in Nigeria to build Smart Cities? Will there be major disadvantages? What would be the cost to achieve these?”

Nowadays, cloud-based security solutions are providing good opportunities for the growth of the IoT security market by minimizing implementation and maintenance costs, thereby leading organizations to shift towards the deployment of cloud-based security solutions.
However, Identity Access Management (IAM) solutions provide a security structure and allow the management of user identity and related access permissions in an automated fashion, hence is expected to hold the largest share of the IoT security solutions market.

The solution includes components such as provisioning, directory technologies, password management, single sign on, advanced authentication, and audit. Risk over maintenance of sensitive data, increased spending pattern over security solutions, and enhanced enterprise mobility are the drivers for the growth of IAM.

The MarketingandMarketing report also identified that during the last decade, the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region has undergone tremendous economic growth, political transformation, and social change. Owing to the sophistication of threats, countries such as India, Japan, and Singapore have all updated or launched new national security policies.

Factors such as continual growth in mobile workforce, increasing complexity of businesses, unregulated nature of Internet, and growth in the adoption of BYOD, which in turn comes up with strong security requirements, are now expected to push large as well as Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) to adopt various security solutions.

Dima-Okojie therefore called for a focus on small and focus areas/sectors that are important to local communities, states and the country as a whole; “which will provide more value to the populace, for example; traffic which is a bane for many in Lagos. It is estimated on average, that Lagosians spend an average of 3 to 6 hours daily commuting to and from work. Starting out with traffic would also aid other areas like medical, fire and security emergency services”.