Research identifies data security as AIoT's biggest challenge

1 min read

According to new research from XMOS, data security is the biggest challenge to the $3 trillion artificial intelligence of things (AIoT) market.

The research found that nearly half (45%) of the electronics engineers surveyed believe that data security and autonomy present the biggest risks to the AIoT revolution, more than bandwidth (38%), latency (32%), scalability (24%) and cloud infrastructure limitations (24%).

The AIoT market has been touted as one of the biggest technology revolutions since the advent of the cloud, with the potential to revolutionise our lives and industry, from smart homes and cities, to autonomous cars, healthcare and industry 4.0.

Engineers were found to be concerned about security because of the high risk of data leakages and hacking as devices become smarter and begin to handle more and more potentially sensitive information.

These findings were published by Bristol-based AI and voice processing firm XMOS in its Edge of Tomorrow report, which uncovers the sheer potential of the AIoT and outlines what electronics engineers believe to be the biggest market- and device-level challenges to unlocking the industry.

Bandwidth and latency are other issues for AIoT applications where safety and security are priorities while current processing capabilities of the cloud limit the ability for the AIoT to scale.

Commenting on the report Mark Lippett, CEO at XMOS, said: “The AIoT market will reach its potential when specific concerns have been addressed around how to make individual devices smarter and safer, without costs spiralling out of control and without overloading the cloud with significantly more data processing.

“However, technological advances in edge processing are starting to solve these issues. By moving processing capabilities onto devices themselves, the AIoT ceases to rely on the cloud for processing and storage, and therefore greatly reduces opportunities for breaches in data security. In the same stroke, moving away from the cloud removes issues around latency, bandwidth and scalability.”