The price of hardware that boosts IoT development is dropping, Goldman Sachs says

The average cost of sensors used in IoT products will drop to nearly $0.30 by the end of the decade, boosting the number of internet-connected devices installed to 34 billion, recent report shows.

By 2020, 34 billion devices will be connected to the Internet, or four devices on average for every human on Earth. Gartner predicts 20 billion devices will be shipped by 2020, IDC says 30 billion, and Cisco expects to see 50 billion IoT gadgets delivered in the next five years. Nearly $6 trillion will be spent on IoT solutions over the next five years, while spending on IoT security is expected to reach $547 million in 2018, almost double last year’s $281.54 million.

According to BI Intelligence, by 2018, half of the world will be connected to the Internet.

Recently, researchers from Bitdefender Labs examined four Internet-connected consumer devices and found several common vulnerabilities. The analysis reveals that current authentication mechanisms of internet-connected devices can easily be bypassed to expose networks and users to privacy theft.

“The Internet of Things has the potential to infringe on basic human rights and Internet principles by collecting data with an unprecedented level of detail,”Bitdefender security specialists show in this analysis. “We can learn more about someone than ever, based on the person’s intentional disclosure of eating habits, location, lifestyle, etc. as well as via metadata. And although fragmented data sources seem harmless, by aggregating them, cyber-criminals can create an invasive digital portrait of a person. The IoT expands the reach of surveillance and tracking, leaving users with few or no options to customize privacy settings or control what happens to their data.”