The rising occurrence of high-profile security hacks and privacy breaches, as well as being personally victimized, are contributing to ever-increasing consumer anxiety about smart home devices and platforms, according to new research.
Parks Associates’ latest quarterly survey of 10,000 U.S. broadband households found that almost half of consumers rank data security and privacy issues as their greatest concerns about connecting devices to the Internet, compared to other problems they may encounter, such as with tech support. Forty percent of the respondents say they have experienced a privacy or security problem with a connected device in the past year, most commonly viruses and malware.
“Our most recent data reveals that almost half of U.S. broadband households are ‘very concerned’ [rating 6-7 on a 7-point scale] about hackers getting control of connected devices and hackers getting access to data from the device,” says Parks Associates Research Analyst Brad Russell. “In tracing trending changes on these consumer attitudes from 2014 to 2016, we find that while the total share of consumers who are ‘concerned’ [rating 5-7] has not appreciably changed, the share of those that are ‘very concerned’ has grown by 6% to 7%. Similarly, the share of consumers who are ‘not concerned [rating 1-3] has shrunk by about half.”
From the article "Network Security: Hacking Fears Could Scare Consumers Away from Smart-Home Devices" by Rodney Bosch.
One chief reason for the meteoric rise in DIY competition, of course, is market penetration — read: the historical lack thereof. According to the latest Parks Associates research, 75% of U.S. househol...
Forty-four percent. That’s how many Americans, according to Chris White, an analyst at Parks Associates, monitor their energy—manually or otherwise. That’s 44% of homeowners who are already engaging i...
Why are integrators important to Amazon? Quigley calls custom integrators “the new architects” of the smart home. He cites data from Parks Associates that even though 60 percent of consumers say th...
As for why dealers change their offerings, there are many possibilities. According to the Parks and SSI study, competitive forces are key. It could also be driven by the consumer, as more homeowners a...
