According to data by Juniper Research, retailers who look to capitalize on the growing demand from the Internet of Things will most likely spend $2.5 billion dollars in upgrading the infrastructure, including hardware and installation costs, by the year 2020. This growth is compared to the cost from this year, which only reached an estimated $670 million dollars.

The Internet of Things is a term used to describe the communication capabilities of devices that allows the devices to share data and information with the operator as well as other devices in a connected device infrastructure.

Included in the spending are Bluetooth beacons, RFID (radio frequency ID) sensors and tags, and other supported hardware. With this push in investment to the Internet of Things, Juniper Research makes the correlation that retailers who look to build their own connected ‘ecosystem’ of devices all linked together stand to gain a market advantage from their investment.

Along with this growth in devices that are connected in their own ‘ecosystem’ will come a substantial change into the current ways of handling cybersecurity. Abundant news coverage of the Ashley Madison hack and the scandal following it goes to show that our current security measures for even high profile websites don’t meet the standards that interconnectivity of all of our devices need to have.

Author Steffen Sorrell made a few key points about the changes needed for security in a world where all of our devices essentially communicate with one another.

“Where today’s security is principally focused on access prevention, the [Internet of Things] security model will require robust means of identifying inevitable network breaches. Should suspicious activity be detected, parts of the network can then be ‘shut off’ in similar fashion to marine vessel bulkheads to prevent attack spread.”