Cisco IoT Report Says We Value IoT, But Don’t Yet Trust It

Cisco’s first IoT Value/Trust Paradox report, which surveyed 3000 consumers and was designed to provide businesses with insights on how to increase IoT adoption and customer confidence, revealed that while most consumers believe IoT services have significant value, they don’t understand or trust how their data is used or managed.

Despite this, respondents overwhelmingly said they were unwilling to disconnect from IoT services. They reluctantly accept the risk and take value over trust. Companies that can achieve consumer trust and provide value will be the ones that experience and sustain growth.

See also: Data manipulation — when IoT can’t be trusted

“As more companies build their businesses around IoT services, they need to first understand the importance of educating customers on how they are using their data to deliver new, valuable services that will enhance their lives,” said Macario Namie, Head of IoT Strategy at Cisco. “Consumers are asking for more visibility into IoT data practices, and to increase transparency around your IoT data governance and management, you first need to be able to determine who gets what data, where and when. Today’s IoT platforms solve for this problem and can give you the ability to enhance consumer confidence and trust, which can lead to greater adoption of your IoT services.”

Other key insights in the report include:

• Awareness: More than twice as many consumers recognize personal IoT devices than public ones. When consumers were provided with a broad list of devices and asked to identify which were part of the Internet of Things, 63 percent on average correctly identified personal IoT devices (wearables, home security systems, and so on), while only 27 percent were aware of public IoT implementations (street lighting, energy meters, traffic systems, and so on).
• Value: Across the IoT spectrum, the perceived value that IoT brings to consumers’ lives is quite high: 53 percent of respondents feel that IoT makes their lives more convenient, 47 percent say IoT makes them more efficient, and 34 percent say IoT increases their safety.
• Trust: While consumers are seeing increasing value in IoT services, they are very concerned about the security of their data and how it is being used. Only 9 percent of respondents say that they trust that their data collected and shared through IoT is secure. And only 14 percent feel that companies do a good job of informing them what data is being collected and how it is used.
• The IoT Paradox: Consumers value IoT, but don’t trust it. Despite this lack of trust, they are not willing to disconnect: 42 percent said that IoT is too integrated into their daily lives to disconnect from these devices and services, regardless of the perceived risk.

For the complete study, download the report here.