Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

Network Security: Hacking Fears Could Scare Consumers Away from Smart-Home Devices

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.

Previously In The News

Year In Review: Cyber Attacks On IoT Devices, Networks Grow In Intensity

Mirai, and other similar attacks, could become an even larger problem as more consumers continue adopt IoT devices at the home. Indeed, IAB revealed in its recent study that two-thirds, or 62 percent,...

Cincinnati Bell Scales Local Call Center To 300 agents To Address Growing Fioptics Base

The adoption of smart home devices reflects the overall Internet of Things (IoT) trend. A recent Parks Associates study revealed that in homes with a broadband connection, 26% now own a smart home dev...

Can Hollywood Survive Streaming?

This past decade is the one that altered the very definition of Hollywood. (Verb: to stream.) Streaming services, of course, have been challenging the Hollywood status quo for years. Netflix began str...

AI and machine learning could goose home security and monitoring sector—report

Do-it-yourself security systems will cause some shifts in the residential security market as more than two million broadband homes will have a self-monitored system by year's end. According to rese...