San Francisco, Calif.-based IoT conference and expo Internet of Things World, released findings from its survey of over 100 IoT enterprise leaders within enterprises.
It wanted to discover how their executives feel about the IoT implementation at their organizations.
The research focused on the top concerns decision makers have related to: Implementation, employee training, cybersecurity, and blockchain, as well as how they plan to overcome them.
The survey found that two out of three (66 percent) of companies say their C-Suite executives are supportive of their IoT Implementation — even though there are challenges.
The top challenges respondents said were: Implementing the technology (34%), security (25%), initial purchase cost (17%), scalability (10%), and business buy-in (8%).
Most decision makers were not concerned about the on-going upkeep costs, with only three percent listing it as their top concern.
The top two concerns — implementation and security — are closely related. Almost half (45%) of companies say they are deploying IoT devices on a dedicated network to mitigate security risk.
Additionally, nearly half (46%) are introducing internal training systems for their workforce, to improve the efficacy of the devices and limit vulnerability due to an oversight.
In addition to training their whole workforce on best practices, enterprises are focused on building out their technical roles.
Almost two-thirds (64%) of companies say they are planning to train current staff to fill more technical roles, while 62% say they are planning to hire additional employees like data analyst roles or another technical title.
Once the IoT devices are successfully deployed, decision makers are focused on maintaining security by ensuring that even minor components are implemented correctly.
Two-out-of-three companies (68%) say they are regularly updating firmware and software to secure their ecosystems. Over two out of five (43%) are checking devices to see if physical access makes them vulnerable to hacking.