Dec 24, 2016 06:03 AM EST By Chris Brandt, UniversityHerald Reporter

The Internet of Things will grow exponentially in every way by the year 2020. This was the fearless forecast created by Juniper Research, a research company which specializes in online, digital, and mobile research.

The data gathered by Juniper Research shows that devices, actuators, and sensors that are connected to the IoT wil continue to balloon and by 2021, will amount to 46 billion which is a 200 percent increase from 2012.

The research also pointed out that the industries where the biggest growth will occur in terms of the IoT will be in industrial and public services, which has consistently shown a 24 percent growth every year.

Aside from the fearless forecast, the research company also issued a warning saying that with the growth, there will also be an increase in cyber-crimes. For example, 2016 has been a year where the biggest DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack happened. Although hackers are targeting personal and corporate data, it is clear that they also aim to destroy the physical assets of business and organizations.

Corporations and businesses are, of course, fighting back by investing heavily on IoT security. Despite this, however, consumers are left with little or no security at all leaving them vulnerable. Thus, the research suggests that there should be a collaboration between businesses and the media in order to improve the security.

Aside from the growing threat, the burgeoning IoT landscape will also create new challenges as it becomes more and more complex. Steffen Sorerell, the research author said, that the present infrastructure and architecture were not designed to handle Big Data.

He then added that if service providers will continue to overlook this weakness, non-tech savvy consumers will be the casualties of these changes since they won't be able to handle the complexities of the IoT.

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