Managed security services are on the rise for a mix of reasons. The evolving and increasingly complex threat landscape, the inability to deal with it (as a company), due to limited resources, and the overall trend to focus on the business and go for ‘managed’ and ‘as a Service’ are just a few.
The exact same phenomenon is happening in the Internet of Things security space where IoT managed security services providers (MSSPs) can especially look forward to strong growth from the industrial Internet market in the coming years.
Needless to say that IoT security ranks high on the agenda of organizations which are moving into scalable IoT deployments and those who increasingly leverage the Internet of Things today, most of them in the Industrial Internet of Things.
Opportunities for security services vendors in an ‘as a Service’ IoT security model
As IoT security isn’t the same as cybersecurity in general, the players in the overall managed security services providers market aren’t necessarily the same as those that you will encounter in managed IoT security services, certainly in the industrial context where opportunities are highest those next few years.
Just one example: NextNine, seen as a contender in IoT managed security services, and mainly active in OT (Operational Technology). Remember the integration of IT and OT in the Industrial Internet of Things market.
NextNine is mentioned, along with G&D, Gemalto and companies such as Symantec, GlobalSign, Oberthur Technologies and Entrust Datacard Harman, in the scope of a new report from ABI Research, looking at the evolutions in the IoT managed security services market. According to ABI Research they all have the opportunity to (further) move in the “as a Service” model market in IoT.
The growth of IoT managed security services: initially driven by the industrial Internet
And it’s not a bad time for security innovators with expertise in IoT but also non-IoT cybersecurity domains, to further develop their IoT managed security services offering.
According to ABI Research the market for such services is pretty significant financially with, as mentioned initially mainly opportunities in the industrial Internet space.
By 2021, overall market revenues for IoT managed security services are poised to surpass $11 Billion, a fivefold increase, the research firm states.
While, within the context of IoT MSSP services revenues, today we mainly talk about OEM and aftermarket telematics, fleet management and video surveillance use cases, ABI Research says, new innovations in areas such as connected vehicles, smart cities and utilities are the future drivers of IoT MSSP revenues.
In other words: the scope of the IoT MSSP market is broadening as industries and use cases outside the main IoT spending industries also gradually shift from manufacturing, transportation, oil & gas and the likes to other IoT use cases and markets, ultimately also consumer IoT (although there the IoT MSSP opportunity is not really understood there yet but knowing the crucial role of security and safety in IoT which can stretch very far, depending on use case, that would be a matter of time).
An additional driver for the ‘as a Service’ (Security as a Service, Identity as a Service,…) model is that no vendor will offer an end-to-end IoT security approach and thus managed services are the way to ‘plug security gaps’.
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