With a strength of producing 7,500 types of products and capability of employing more than 25 crores people, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) sector of India is considered as the backbone of Modern Indian Economy in the Startup India age. The speedy growth of SMEs in the current decade is backed by parallel developments in the technology sector, especially in the IoT. Not just India, all the emerging economies of the world such as China, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, South Africa, and Brazil are lead by IoT Driven SMEs. For these low resources developing countries, IoT is the fuel of business growth which helps to strengthen the country’s capacity management and leads towards optimum utilisation of the resources. In fact, the immensely powerful IoT has revolutionized not only the businesses but the entire world economy with its unprecedented benefits.
A Step towards Digitization
The growth of IoT has surpassed the population growth. Today, almost 6.2 billion IoT devices exist in the world, but this figure will surge up to 25 billion by 2020. IoT and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are responsible for the digital transformation of the modern SMEs and with the advent of Big Data, growth has become the destiny of smart businesses. That’s why Big Data, IoT, Digital Transformation and AI are called four strongest pillars of smart businesses.
Richard Linger – Head of Nimbus’ industry division, says: “IoT is becoming more and more accessible and inclusive. The range of products and services that can be enhanced through this technology is endless – almost any object can be transformed into a “smart” object, and the customer base for these enhanced products is expanding rapidly.”
Based on machine-to-machine (M2M) low-cost sensor network, IoT can bring disruptions in the operations and the approaches of SMEs in almost every business domain – be it Operations, Logistics, HR, Finance, Marketing, R&D, or the Customer Support. And, every industry is benefiting from the useful presence of IoT in both developed and developing countries. Here, a great involvement of sensor technology helps intelligently to capture Big Data: the life fluid of digital organisations.
IoT is advantageous to SMEs in many ways; It helps in energy consumption, interdepartmental communication, facility management, customer interaction, MIS, supply chain management, quality control, employee engagement, and in reducing the overall cost of the organisation.
Security Can Never Be Compromised
Although IoT has a proven record in contributing to the growth of SMEs in the last few years, but a number of past incidences highlight that whenever the security being compromised, businesses were targeted by cyber criminals. It suggests, a security lapse in data transfer can cause huge losses to an organisation and its stakeholders. Businesses that fail to identify threats in today’s cyber security landscape are vulnerable to hacking attacks, their critical data and intellectual property are seriously at risk. As published by Cybersecurity Ventures – the worldwide spending on IoT security is reaching $348 Million in 2016 and it is predicted to touch the $1 trillion figure during 2017 to 2021.
According to CERT, about 32,323 websites were hacked in 2014 alone, and as per the reports of the National Crime Records Bureau, the number of reported cases of cyber crimes increased by 350% from 2010 to 2016. Reported cyber crimes went from 966 to a whopping 4,356 between these years. India also remained the second most targeted country in the world through social media in 2014.
Bespoke Solutions To Dodge The Threats
Cyber attacks are on the rise and the frequency of cyber attacks will increase further in the next few years. Accordingly, the costs associated with data breaches would also continue to rise. While companies are investing more in cyber security to ward off attacks, they know they won’t be able to spend their way to absolute security. As threats grow ever more complicated and targeted, both small and medium scale enterprises should take every available opportunity to learn more about the most advanced and cost effective bespoke security solutions such as Multifactor Authentication, Data Loss Prevention, Advanced Persistent Threat Protection (APTP), and IPS/ Firewall. The use of effective security solutions can help greatly to reduce the threats as well as risks and facilitate the SMEs in meeting their goals and objectives.
