Enterprises could spend as much as $1.5 billion to secure their IoT devices in 2018, a new report revealed.

As part of its report titled “Forecast: IoT Security, Worldwide, 2018,” Gartner estimated that organizations’ IoT security spending will grow 28 percent this year, increasing from the $1.2 billion spent in 2017.

IoT Spending on the Rise

Professional services will carry $946 million of that new investment, Gartner predicted. Endpoint security and gateway security will follow at $373 million and $186 million, respectively.

As the demand for penetration testing, asset discovery and other solutions grows, organizations will commit even more funding to IoT security, according to the report. In addition, spending will more than double from $1.5 billion in 2018 to $3.1 billion in 2021.

Limiting Factors

Although global spending on IoT security is increasing, Gartner noted some limiting factors. For example, failure to prioritize and implement security best practices and tools could restrain spending by as much as 80 percent in the coming years.

Ruggero Contu, research director at Gartner, said that companies are also failing to organize their disparate security projects into a cohesive whole. He noted that most IoT security measures are planned, deployed and operated by business units in collaboration with IT.

“However,” he explained, “coordination via common architecture or a consistent security strategy is all but absent, and vendor product and service selection remains largely ad hoc, based upon the device provider’s alliances with partners or the core system that the devices are enhancing or replacing.”

A Bright Future for IoT Security

The lack of standard IoT security practices might be a problem now, but Gartner indicated that it won’t be an issue for long.

Regulatory compliance will help emphasize security by-design for the IoT, especially in heavily regulated industries. If those guidelines are widely adopted, Gartner predicted that IT security standards bodies will create formal frameworks for securing connected devices in the workplace.