As an emerging technology, it’s difficult to fully grasp the true potential of the Internet of Things (IoT). For starters, smart cities alone are predicted to touch a staggering $147 billion by 2020. And more than half of the world’s IT leaders investing in IoT have already embraced and fully implemented an IoT strategy, while a third of all leaders are already rolling one out.

The IoT upsides are so strong that they’re hard to measure, but what are the risks and downsides? Yes. Cybercrime and human error are a reality, but what about optimism bias — or the risk that organizations, businesses, and individuals knowingly take or chose to take, although chances of exposure to cybercrime may be high.

For most organizations, optimism bias goes beyond measuring risk versus reward and is most common when risks are ignored simply because the latest malicious attack happened to someone else’s company.

Although there is the understanding that connected platforms like IoT can increase exposure to cybercrime and malicious attacks, decision makers may trust that even if they are compromised, they’ll recover unscathed. Or they believe that access and convenience are well worth the risk.

Not so. Optimism bias can destroy bottom lines, disrupt business objectives and cause reputations to suffer so much damage that partnerships and agreements are fractured forever. Like any other emerging technology, IoT should be implemented with proactive protection against cyber threats.

NOVAM’s Health Checks enable users, devices, and applications to verify that software packages and hardware components are uncompromised and unmodified by malware or other cyber threats, across the entire secure boot chain and run-time on a device.